Two councils are to be asked to urge the Government to save a threatened £300m 77 bed hospital for Cambridge which will “change the story of cancer”. Liberal Democrats on South Cambridgeshire District Council and Cambridge City Council have both submitted council motions calling on the Government to protect the funding for the Cambridge Cancer Hospital.
“At the moment, cancer affects one in two of us and is a diagnosis that induces fear in patients and their families,” says Professor Gilbertson, Director of the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Centre, and Research Lead for Cambridge Cancer Research Hospital.
“But imagine a world where there is no longer a fear of cancer,” he said. “That’s the world we’re trying to create.”
He believes that once built the hospital “will change the story of cancer”.
His optimism was shaken this week when new health secretary Wes Streeting revealed that the future of 25 projects within the New Hospital Programme in England is in doubt.
And Cambridge Cancer Hospital is on that list.
Mr Streeting said the overall programme of new hospitals promised by the Conservatives was undeliverable and unaffordable.
The shock waves are reverberating around Cambridgeshire and has led to the Liberal Democrats urging him to press ahead with the cancer hospital for Cambridge.
Motions from the Liberal Democrats will be debated by both Cambridge City Council and South Cambridgeshire District Council in October.
A statement from Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said: “On Friday 20th September 2024, the Government published the terms of reference for the New Hospital Programme (NHP) review.
“As the Cambridge Cancer Research Hospital project does not yet have full business case approval, we will be included in the national review, which aims to put the NHP on a deliverable timetable.
“We are continuing to make significant progress on the Cambridge Cancer Research Hospital project and we look forward to pre-construction works beginning on site in the coming months.”
The statement added: “We expect to submit the full business case next year and are on track to build the hospital by 2029.”
Local Lib Dem MP Pippa Heylings, whose constituency the cancer hospital is in, has been campaigning to protect the hospital and has secured meetings with government officials to express her concerns about the potential cut to funding.
Cllr Sally Ann Hart (Liberal Democrat, SCDC) said: “We have suffered under years of Conservative cuts to healthcare funding and for the new Government to jeopardise the hospital this way is shameful.
“We know the Conservatives mismanaged the economy but that cannot be used as a smokescreen for Labour austerity.
“The new hospital was on track to be delivered by 2030 and has received all the needed planning permissions and even begun early work on site – for it to be put at risk now is just plain wrong.”
Cllr Karen Young (Liberal Democrat, Cambridge City Council, said: “Cambridge Labour needs to stand up for our residents and work with this Labour Government who are putting at risk much needed projects just like the cancer hospital.
“As Liberal Democrats we will do everything we can to push the Government to do the right thing.
“We need the Government to be ambitious on healthcare if we’re going to have any hope of plugging the deficit in health facilities, let alone dealing with the scale of development that Cambridge expects.”
It has always been intended that the new hospital would be funded two-thirds by Government and one-third by philanthropy, with £100m to be raised jointly by the University of Cambridge and Addenbrooke’s Charitable Trust.
The hospital is a collaboration between the University of Cambridge and Cambridge University Hospitals (CUH) NHS Foundation Trust and as well have having 77 single inpatient rooms there will be an expanded outpatient department and larger day patient unit.
The new 26,000m2 building will have seven storeys and will combine modern patient-led NHS clinical space, with three new University of Cambridge research institutes.
Dr Hugo Ford, Head of Cancer Services at CUH and Clinical Lead for Cambridge Cancer Research Hospital, says that bringing academics and doctors together is about “maximising the clinical benefits, the real world benefits of the research that’s done.
“And we’re trying to bring in other communities from industry, from biotech, from other university departments, to build a much wider community.”
A recent update from Nikky Murphy, Deputy Project Director for Cambridge Cancer Research Hospital, said that in April the hospital received planning permission from Cambridge City Council.
“This marks an important milestone for the project and a big step towards our ambition to bring together for the first-time world-leading scientists from the University of Cambridge and the UK’s largest cancer research community within the walls of a new NHS hospital,” she said.
Following the completion of a new staff car park, the main site where the hospital will be built is accessible and enabling works had commence.
She said the principal construction partner Laing O’Rourke were on site in June completing some initial surveys and were continuing the installation of hoardings around the site, ground clearance and archaeological digs.
But despite the project moving to the technical design stage, the final stages of the process – a full business case – needs Government approval to unlock the funding.
In a recent newsletter she remained optimistic the hospital will go ahead and create a “ground-breaking new facility that will transform the lives of the millions of people diagnosed with cancer”.
Read more here:
https://www.cambridgecancer.org.uk/
