By Anna Whittaker, Local Democracy Reporter
A public consultation on major plans to upgrade Nottingham University Hospitals will take place before March 2024.
The ‘Tomorrow’s NUH’ programme has been described as a ‘once in a generation’ opportunity to redevelop hospital services to address health inequalities and spark economic regeneration.
Nottingham University Hospitals, which runs Queen’s Medical Centre and City Hospital, was chosen as one of 40 major hospitals to be funded by the Government to make the changes.
But the Government announced a delay to the plans earlier in May, meaning the work will not be complete by the end of 2030.
Now, Nottingham City Council documents reveal plans to carry out a public consultation on the project will progress, but only “in due course”.
However, reports also state the public consultation should conclude before the start of the pre-election period for the mayoral election in late March 2024.
The NHS says the exact timings on the public consultation are still to be agreed.
The plans could see maternity and neonatal services being merged at Queen’s Medical Centre in a new Women’s and Children’s hospital.
Most planned operations, such as hip replacements, would be delivered at the City Hospital, with some emergency care moving to the QMC. Cancer treatment would continue to be delivered across both sites.
The vision is to turn City Hospital into a “centre of excellence for elective care”.
NHS bosses from the Integrated Care Board (ICB) will attend Nottingham City Council’s health scrutiny committee on October 12 to give an update on the plans.
The ICB says it has completed the Pre-Consultation Business Case and NHS England has confirmed the funding and “given support to proceed to full public consultation”.
Council documents said: “This has been developed over several years, with significant clinical engagement and public engagement on broad proposals as they emerged.”
So far, three rounds of engagement with the public have been carried out between 2020 and 2023.
The ICB says that overall, the responses have shown “broad support” for the plans with 78 per cent of respondents saying they were strongly/somewhat supportive of the plans.
Council documents added: “Whilst the overall feedback indicated broad support, the engagement highlighted some areas of concern from respondents and identified areas where more dialogue was required with patients and the public to fully inform the developing model.
“As a consequence, a further round of engagement took place during February and March 2023 in order to strengthen our understanding or address gaps in our knowledge.”
In total, almost 3,850 people have so far had input into the Tomorrow’s NUH plans.
The committee will be asked to approve the principle of proceeding to a public consultation on the plans.
