Hospital roof held up by props poses "direct risk of life and safety"

[Fambo Number Mive]

A hospital roof held up by props poses a "direct risk to the life and safety of patients", board papers said.

Despite the 131 supports at Norfolk's Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH), the "potential of catastrophic failure of the roof" remains, the papers revealed.

The government said the hospital had been given "over £20m to directly address the most immediate issues"...

It said the latest problems caused by the roofing had closed the hospital's critical care unit, though Ms Skaife-Knight wrote that it would soon reopen following a two-week closure for repairs...A risk register within the board meeting agenda reads: "There is a direct risk of life and safety to patients, visitors and staff of the trust due to the potential of catastrophic failure of the roof structure due to structural deficiencies."

It said this was because the pre-cast concrete construction of the building was 40 years old, despite only being built to last 25 years, and rated the risk as "very high/extreme"...

Queen Elizabeth Hospital was not selected as one of 40 hospitals included in a £3.7bn building package announced by the government in October last year.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-56603933

If the building was only built to last 25 years, why wasn't a new hospital built 15 years ago? It's ridiculous that this situation hasn't been sorted, it's all very well the government giving £20m but that doesn't seem to be nearly enough for a new hospital. We clap for NHS staff but the NHS staff, patients and visitors at this hospital are clearly at risk. I'm sure all the props must be a pain to work around as well.

This government can find money for new nuclear missiles but doesn't seem to be able to find money for a new hospital.

Or am I missing something here?

[bgmnts]

As long as nobody goes on the roof, it'll be fine.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I imagine what's happening here is they want to close the hospital and sell off the land to property developers, but have nowhere to envelop the services into. Chances are if they had built a hospital 15 years ago it would've been a bad PFI deal.

I've been in old hospitals that have been wound down into small outpatient services and offices. There were buckets catching the rain in the decommissioned canteen and they had to use Eden to bring bottled water in for the water coolers because the tap water was tanked and not safe to drink.

[Buelligan]

They're leaving it until we can all wear a coloured ribbon for those who died.