Bradford 'needs new hospital', council told

The boss of Bradford Royal Infirmary (BRI) has told councillors: "We need a new hospital, plain and simple."

Prof Mel Pickup, chief executive of Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said at a council scrutiny committee that much of BRI was more than 100 years old.

She told members it would likely cost more to repair and upgrade the existing building than it would to build a new hospital.

These claims were first raised in BRI's unsuccessful bid to be considered for the government's New Hospital Programme, a proposal which would have seen the hospital and St Luke's demolished and re-built on a single site.

The scrutiny committee was discussing the Baroness Amos review into maternity care, which was published earlier this year.

The review found that the maternity system in England was no longer fit to consistently deliver high-quality, compassionate care to every woman and family, and required urgent reform.

BRI was one of the hospitals looked into, and numerous concerns were raised about the experience of women experiencing maternity care at the hospital.

Pickup apologised over the findings, and said the inner-city hospital had "expanded beyond the capability of providing modern health care".

In 2023, neighbouring Airedale Hospital was selected for the rebuild programme due to much of it being built with dangerous RAAC concrete.

It was expected to cost between £1bn to £1.5bn and was currently in the planning stage, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

While Airedale's "issues took precedence", BRI's challenges continued, Pickup said.

"Over the coming decades we'll end up spending as much or more on repairing the hospital and modernising it as it would take to build a new hospital.

"We're maintaining a very old infrastructure, things are constantly breaking down and needing repair.

"We do what we can with the money we are able to secure, but it all feels piecemeal."

Later in the meeting, Sara Hollins, director of midwifery at Bradford Teaching Hospitals, detailed how the constraints of the building had affected the maternity service.

She said: "The building wasn't made for the volume of people we have now.

"In the maternity service people often stay longer so there is a pressure for space. But our estate is our estate."

She explained the building "hasn't kept up with changes to clinical practice" and would benefit from more side rooms and delivery rooms, which is "what women want".

Her hope was that, when the full set of recommendations from the Amos review were released, this would lead to funding to help improve the hospital estate, she added.

Listen to highlights from West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.