Stoke Mandeville Hospital receives new unit for additional beds as part of £250m funding

Stoke Mandeville Hospital is receiving new beds as part of a Government funding project.

An additional to 21 additional inpatient beds are coming to the Bucks hospital as the Government has allocated £250 million to improving facilities across the country.

Money to support hospitals up and down the country has been provided by the Government as frontline staff begin preparations for this winter.

It is hoped this new unit will help to lessen the wait faced by patients arriving at the Emergency Department at the Aylesbury hospital.

Sending more beds to hospitals is one part of the Government’s wider Urgent and Emergency Care Recovery Plan. Other priorities linked to the project include improving ambulance response times.

Raghuv Bhasin, chief operating officer at Buckinghamshire NHS Trust, said: “The Trust is extremely pleased to have received funding for this much needed new unit. Building work has already begun on site and we hope to be able to open the beds for patients in the new year. This new unit together with the reopening of our Olympic Lodge facility will provide vital additional beds for patients as part of our wider winter plan.”

A new building is being constructed next to the existing Emergency Department. Whilst the new space is being built, an area of car park C, used by patients, NHS staff, and services in Waddesdon Wing, has had to be closed for safety reasons.

Also an overflow car park has been opened to the public towards the back of the hospital site near the Claydon Wing rear entrance. Signs are in place to direct patients and families towards the temporary site.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak visited Buckinghamshire on the day of the extra beds announcement.

He urged junior doctors and consultants to accept the Government’s latest pay offer, which he says is based on a recommendation from an independent body.

At the time junior doctors attached to the British Medical Association had taken industrial action for the fifth time in nine months. Consultant doctors within the Bucks NHS area are set to start three days of industrial action at 7am tomorrow (24 August).