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Where your care is delivered

Our Trust buildings and infrastructure

At Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust our focus is on providing the right care, in the right place, at the right time and everything we do is aimed at delivering high-quality care when and where you need it. Although our teams of healthcare professionals are committed to providing you with the very best healthcare treatment and support, many of the buildings from which they have to deliver that care do not meet the needs of modern-day healthcare.

You should expect more, and we want to offer you better facilities.

Background

The Trust runs its services from 12 different sites across the area. Four of these sites are hospitals providing inpatient services with community services being run out of the other eight sites. Some of our buildings allow other healthcare providers, such as Oxford Health, Frimley and North West London Dental and some charities, to deliver services within Buckinghamshire.

We have some of the oldest estate in the NHS:

  • A hospital on the Stoke Mandeville site was originally established in the 1830s as a Cholera hospital – a very long time before the NHS came into being.
  • Wycombe Hospital was built over several phases from the 1960s.
  • 60% of the buildings owned by the Trust are more than 30 years old.
  • Our Trust faces the ninth highest repairs backlog costs of all healthcare trusts in England.

Earlier this year we applied for but were disappointed to not be selected to receive much needed funding to redevelop our buildings via the Hospitals Infrastructure Programme.

We will of course continue to make sure that all our services, in whatever building they may be based, can continue safely and effectively for our patients while we work towards refurbishing current facilities or replacing them with brand new buildings, as and when smaller amounts of funding become available.

Delivering 21st century healthcare in 20th century buildings

The Wycombe Hospital site has an unaffordable backlog of maintenance requirements, around one hundred million pounds worth, £80 million of which is related to the Tower.

The Tower is in poor condition and yet is home to vital services such as our intensive care unit and operating theatres.

Currently it costs the Trust around £2 million a year just to continue to monitor the condition of the tower and to ensure that clinical services can be safely delivered. This includes protecting the Tower with scaffolding to keep it safe for patients, visitors and staff.  We would much prefer to be able to spend this money on the care we provide.

Even if we could find £80 million for all the maintenance work required at Wycombe Hospital Tower, we still wouldn’t have a building that meets the needs of modern-day healthcare. The Tower was a building designed and built in the 1960s with small, narrow wards, poor ventilation and theatres on different floors.

Our main acute services will continue to be provided in Wycombe Tower until we have secured funding for and built alternative facilities on the existing Wycombe Hospital site as part of our public commitment to exit the Wycombe Tower.

With our Board’s approval some of our community services, such as children’s services, are being moved from the Tower to other locations within Wycombe to make it easier for residents to access these services and to provide a better patient experience.

The Tower will only be demolished if and when alternative buildings are funded and built on the existing Wycombe Hospital site.

Despite the poor appearance of the Tower at Wycombe Hospital recently, with its full scaffolding and the maintenance backlog referred to above, we wish to reassure members of the public that safety is our top priority.

The scaffolding was put in place as a precautionary measure, to ensure the safety of our patients, visitors and staff.

The scaffolding is being dismantled in spring/summer 2024 following completion of repairs to the Tower, which have included either removing or repairing damaged panels, replacing gutters and rainwater drains to keep the building watertight, installing support stations to support the outer structure and repairing damaged concrete.

We’re working hard to ensure all services based in the tower can continue as normal while we seek funding to allow us to provide replacement facilities.

Main tower from side Main tower at Wycombe Hospital

We were delighted to receive funding for develop a purpose-built children’s emergency department, plus maternity and gynaecological departments, which opened in April 2023. The new Waddesdon Wing, that houses these services, showcases the high standard of building and facilities that we aspire to for the rest of our services in the Trust to support modern day healthcare.

Children's ED entrance

Children's ED corridor

Children's ED waiting area

By contrast our main emergency department, intensive care unit and theatres are situated in decades old buildings that need to be replaced.

The doors into our ICU department

Area at SMH in need of repair or rebuilding

Doors to the out patient area at SMH

Our vision for hospital and community healthcare facilities in Buckinghamshire

Instead of continuing to spend tax payers’ money to maintain the current buildings on our Wycombe Hospital site, we are asking for up to £200 million to fund a purpose-built planned care centre for Wycombe. This would bring together all of our operating theatres at Wycombe Hospital enabling us to see more patients more quickly. This would, in turn help to reduce the time that people have to wait for any non-emergency operations and provide a better experience for patients and staff.

An artist's impression of how Wycombe Hospital could look.

We have a phased plan that’s ready to go as soon as we can secure the funding

  1. New clinical extension to be built
  2. This new extension would then be integrated with the more ‘modern’ buildings on the Wycombe Hospital site, which would be retained
  3. A new entrance for the hospital would be built
  4. The existing multi-storey care park would be extended
  5. Services that are currently located in the tower and older buildings on site would be relocated to the new extension and existing more modern buildings.
  6. The older buildings on the site would then be demolished – including Wycombe Hospital tower and the buildings immediately behind it.

Wycombe Hospital development: phased plan pic 1

We would like to improve the buildings to create an exclusive entrance for our emergency services and another separate main entrance that allows access to all other outpatient and non-emergency care services.

This year we have secured funding to add an additional new ward and redevelop the main entrance and will be improving our retail and catering facilities.

We also want to be able to provide state of the art buildings for our theatres and critical care facilities.

 

The high street plays a pivotal role in our communities it’s the place where people shop, meet and work.

Our public services need to serve our communities better, especially in areas of deprivation where they need to be easy to access.

Aylesbury town centre

In summer 2023 the Trust decided to pilot an initiative called ‘health on the high street’ in Aylesbury town centre.

Health on the high street aims to improve the health and wellbeing of our those in greatest need within our communities through accessible and joined up public services. It is hoped that the initiative will also help to support the revitalisation of our town centres as vibrant community spaces.

The Health on the High Street model enables Trust healthcare services to be delivered alongside public health and wellbeing initiatives as well as social support services to create an integrated system centred around the needs of our local people and communities.

Our first pilot scheme situated in Friars Square shopping centre openned summer 2023. It offers services including:

  • Preventative healthcare advice and screening
  • Children and Young people services
  • Maternity advice and support services
  • Vaccinations
  • Older peoples’ support

Help support our funding campaign

Help support our campaign to fund the acute and community facilities the people of Buckinghamshire deserve.

The Trust is urging the Government to consider in its approach to the new Hospitals Infrastructure Programme that Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (RACC) are not the only critical structural issue that trusts are dealing with. Giving smaller amounts of funding to more trusts, alongside the major funding schemes, would improve both safety and experience for many more patients.

  • Join the conversation to draw attention to the dire state of our estate.
  • Send a letter to your MP expressing your concerns about the state of our Trust buildings from which we run our services run.

Further information