Half of new hospitals promised by Boris Johnson will not be built for decades

At least half the 40 new hospitals promised by Boris Johnson will not be built until the 2040s, the Guardian has learned, in a move described as “devastating” for staff and patients.

Labour is preparing to announce that many of the crumbling NHS hospitals in England due to be replaced by 2030 are in effect being removed from the building programme.

Wes Streeting, the health secretary, will blame the Conservatives for bequeathing Labour a huge infrastructure project that was budgeted only until this March and for which costs have spiralled to an estimated £30bn.

The announcement, likely to be made early next week, will leave about 20 rebuilds in limbo, forcing many patients to continue being treated in increasingly dangerous environments and buildings that are unfit for purpose.

The heads of the affected trusts will be infuriated and the decision could prompt criticism from local MPs when a government review of the programme is published.

In September, Streeting said that 12 of the 40 projects, which included new buildings within hospitals and refurbishments, could go ahead, including seven facing the risk of imminent collapse because they contain Raac concrete.

But he also ordered a review into the cost, viability and timescale of proceeding with 25 others which involve ageing and decrepit hospitals, parts of which are falling apart and increasingly disrupting care for patients.

Only a handful of those 25 – possibly five or fewer – will now go ahead, sources say, because ministers cannot find the money to proceed.

Labour will say that a raft of planned redevelopments will no longer be included in the list of those that have been allocated money or a completion date. Many works are already well advanced and trusts say that all are desperately needed.

The Treasury – which is wrestling with grim public finances – has played a key role in drastically scaling back the new hospitals programme (NHP). The projects being downgraded will be “kicked into the long grass” and will only go ahead at some unspecified point in the future.

Siva Anandaciva, the director of policy at the King’s Fund health thinktank, said: “While we need to wait for the full details of the review, it will be devastating to staff and patients to hear that plans to rebuild local hospitals might be kicked so far into the long grass, with real doubts now over whether some of these deprioritised hospitals will be rebuilt at all.

“Pausing or delaying plans to rebuild hospitals is also likely to be a false economy [as] many hospitals are already spending significant amounts of taxpayers’ funding trying to maintain sub-standard buildings.”

The Liberal Democrats said abandoning longstanding plans to rebuild so many of the 40 hospitals “would be completely unacceptable”.

“Patients in these communities have been told that these hospitals will rescue their local health services. To deny them what they were promised and the better care that they deserve would be completely unacceptable,” said Helen Morgan, the party’s health and social care spokesperson.

She added: “The state of this programme is a shocking indictment of the contempt that the Conservative party held for patients in these communities. But the new Labour government’s lack of ambition for them is equally shocking.

“To kick these projects into the long grass and put them in the too difficult pile displays everything wrong with ministers’ attitude to the health service.”

Hospitals whose futures have been considered by the review are regularly being hit by problems caused by the fragile state of their infrastructure as a result of repeated delays and uncertainty surrounding the programme.

For example, Epsom and St Helier trust in Surrey had to cancel almost 300 eye operations last summer when its operating theatre ventilation system failed. Similarly, the Princess Alexandra hospital in Essex closed two operating theatres for weeks, and cancelled 36 operations, because air handling units failed, the Health Service Journal reported.

In a letter in September to every MP in England announcing the review, Streeting warned that the NHP was likely to be scaled back, with some projects delayed for many years.

Streeting said: “Because we inherited a programme that was unfunded beyond March 2025 and a wider fiscal inheritance that was hugely challenging, we may have to consider rephasing schemes so that they can be taken forward as fiscal conditions allow.

“A structured and agreed rolling investment approach will mean proceeding with these schemes will be subject to investment decisions at future spending reviews.”

The risks from crumbling hospitals is now so great that some are “outright dangerous”, Matthew Taylor, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation, has said.

Some hospitals which are falling apart, such as Stepping Hill in Stockport, are not included in the NHP’s list of 40 schemes, despite having major problems.

The NHS’s lack of capital funding to repair and rebuild facilities that are beyond the end of their natural life was illustrated last week when Barking and Havering NHS trust in Essex put up posters in Queen’s hospital in Romford asking patients to write to their local MPs – one of whom is Streeting – asking them to support its effort to raise £35m to extend its A&E. It is so overcrowded that it sometimes has to cope with double the 350 patients a day it was built to accommodate, the trust’s chief executive, Matthew Trainer, said.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “The new hospital programme we inherited was undeliverable, with the funding due to run out in March 2025. We are working up a timeline that is affordable and honest, and will announce the outcome of the review in due course.”