00:00 Aging hospitals no longer going to be replaced. The East Kent Hospitals Trust
00:05 applied for £460 million to either build this state-of-the-art
00:10 hospital in Canterbury or upgrading existing facilities in Ashford and
00:16 Margate. Neither are now happening as the government rejected the offer.
00:22 I think there simply is no money and we've been sort of led along a path for so many
00:26 years where we keep saying we're here soon, we're here soon and I've been
00:30 hearing that for all of the six years I've been an MP and before that
00:34 when I was campaigning. The Kent and Canterbury Hospital is in a building
00:37 that predates the NHS. It's 1937 with desperate new buildings and an emergency
00:43 treatment A&E centre should really be in Canterbury because most of my
00:48 constituents have to travel so far to Ashford or Margate just to get emergency
00:53 treatment. The new funding was in a bid to be part of the new 40 hospitals
00:57 Boris Johnson pledged at the last election. How many new hospitals we got
01:03 to build? Correct. Kent has missed out on the £3.7 billion pot of money.
01:10 It was initially thought the area might receive funding after the National
01:15 Audit Office was concerned over the use of reinforced aerated concrete. In a
01:21 statement a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care
01:24 said the NAO's report acknowledges that despite changes to the original programme
01:29 to prioritise hospitals affected by this concrete, 40 new hospitals will still be
01:36 delivered by 2030. We remain firmly committed to delivering these hospitals
01:41 which are now expected to be backed by over £20 billion of investment.
01:46 The Trust has received some funding in the past but campaigners say missing out
01:51 on this is a real blow. There's money been spent on William Harvey and there's been
01:57 money spent on QEQM, all good money, all helpful for the patients but it doesn't
02:02 produce a long-term benefit for the patients of East Kent. There is a
02:08 need for transformation, there's a need for services to be able to
02:12 come together, to be looked at, to collate services so that
02:18 everything's better. We are definitely being left out of East Kent and I think
02:24 the NHS has got a lot to answer for. Going forward campaigners and local MPs
02:30 say they're not going to give up the fight. Gabriel Morris for CAME TV.
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