Westminster North Labour MP Karen Buck

AN NHS hospital with the biggest repairs backlog in the country has endured fires, floods that shut a ward for a fortnight, sewage leaks, and a ceiling collapse in a patient ward, MPs were told this week.

St Mary’s, Paddington, was described as “crumbling” in a special debate about its uncertain future in the House of Commons. It was called after the health secretary announced earlier this month that funding for a planned £1billion rebuild of the Victorian hospital had been put back to 2030.

The chief executive of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, which runs St Mary’s and also Charing Cross and Hammersmith hospitals, has criticised the announcement warning it would be “hugely damaging for hundreds of thousands of people”.

Combined, the three hospitals have a backlog of more than £350million worth of repairs, the highest of any NHS trust in the country.

Westminster North Labour MP Karen Buck said: “St Mary’s is still the hospital with the largest maintenance backlog in the country, and it has been left behind in the programme. That goes far beyond being yet another example of a broken promise.”

She said it was hard for hospital bosses to secure investment for research or to retain staff in a “crumbling hospital building”, and added: “I spoke four years ago about the litany of floods, fires and ceiling collapses that we have had to deal with in our hospital estate.

“Some recent examples include the closure of the gynaecology day services unit, due to the failure of the air-handling unit, and the flooding of the Paterson surgical centre – both of which led to two weeks’ worth of clinical activities being suspended – as well as flooding in the main out-patient building caused by a sewage blockage, a partial ceiling collapse in an in-patient ward, and sewage leaks into the bottom of the Queen Elizabeth building and into the pharmacy.

“These problems not only inconvenience patients and delay treatment; they demand ever more ad hoc spending, which is running at an estimated £6million to £7million every year, and there is a long list of repair work that needs to be done.”

Imperial in 2020 published plans that would see its land sold to a developer in return for them building a super hospital on the site that would be designed by Foster + Partners.

Ms Buck told the secretary of state Steve Barclay that there was a “scheme ready to move”, rem­inding him that Conservative politicians had posed outside the hospital with Matt Hancock before the 2019 general election campaign saying the government was backing the rebuild.

Cities of London and Westminster Conservative MP Nickie Aiken had spoken before Ms Buck about her own experience at the hospital in Praed Street, Paddington. She said she was glad ministers “are committed to getting the enabling works started as soon as possible”, but added that she also had strong concerns. “As it stands, key parts of the estate date back to 1845 and most of the facilities, even the most modern bits, are at least 70 years old. That is because St Mary’s has been developed piecemeal over the decades.

“As a patient of St Mary’s, having recently gone there for one of my regular mammograms, I saw that parts of the hospital are very outdated and very much in need of redevelopment. That is a product of the hospital’s history.

“The development of St Mary’s has the potential to do so much more for our local community and the whole of the UK science, technology, engineering and mathematics sector.”

Defending the delays, Mr Barclay said earlier this month that temporary wards were being set up to “unblock” problems caused by the disrepair at St Mary’s, and added: “This is a reflection of the disruption that two years of the Covid pandemic has caused as well as the pressure from construction inflation.”

In the debate junior health minister Will Quince gave an “absolute assurance we are committed to the delivery” of the new St Mary’s.