Back in March, it was announced that NHS Property had sold the former St George’s Hospital site in Hornchurch to developer, Bellway, for more than £40 million.
The site has stood empty since 2012, and will now be redeveloped to provide nearly 300 new homes, a portion of which will be deemed 'affordable'.
Earlier this month I asked Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, in a parliamentary question if the NHS would be able to retain the receipts from the sale of its property to recycle into improving health services rather than seeing the money go straight to Treasury.
- Julia Lopez Conservative, Hornchurch and Upminster
- Inadequate social and primary care provision lies at the root of a great deal of pressure on hospital A&Es, so we need to plan much better for the demand for services at that level. Will the Secretary of State press the Treasury to ensure that receipts from NHS property transactions are retained by local healthcare trusts, so that they can build much larger primary care facilities than those currently planned?
- Jeremy Hunt Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
- My hon. Friend makes an important point: unless we make it easier for trusts to retain the receipts of property transactions, they will be likely to sit on these properties and we will not get the positive ideas such as that suggested earlier by Mike Gapes, so we do need to find a way to make sure that local areas benefit when they do these deals.
I have also discussed St George's with the leadership teams of both the council and the local NHS Trust as we need to ensure that we get an excellent health and care facility on-site to try to keep people away from Queen's Hospital and ensure that healthcare can be properly integrated into people's lives and the community as we deal with an ageing population. We are hopeful that we will be able to expand the healthcare facility so that it is larger than the one already planned for the site.
My meeting with the Trust team was long and wide-ranging, touching upon recent issues of financial management, the need to improve local GP and commissioning services and the future strains on services in Eastern London as the population grows. I continue to work closely with the Trust and government to flag any issues.