Key tenets of the Scottish government’s NHS Recovery Strategy are at risk of being scrapped, as new construction projects across Scotland’s health service are put on indefinite hold.

A flagship policy for a network of healthcare facilities was supposed to deliver an additional 40,000 procedures by 2026 and help reduce waiting times.

However, the development of remaining National Treatment Centres in NHS Lothian, NHS Grampian and NHS Ayrshire & Arran have now been placed on pause ‘until the necessary capital funding to complete the project becomes available’.

The reprovision of eye services from Edinburgh’s Princess Alexandra Eye Pavilion – previously cancelled and then reinstated in the capital programme – also faces an indefinite hiatus following the publication today of an update on major capital projects across the public sector, including health.

Just three of the 11 originally planned treatment centres are currently operational, with six of the centres still awaiting business case approval.

Both the NHS Forth Valley’s National Treatment Centre and expansion of Clydebank’s NHS Golden Jubilee are currently in progress, will not be shelved but face more delays.

Last year, Audit Scotland concluded that delays to the national treatment centre programme meant targets for increased NHS activity are unlikely to be met.

The public spending watchdog also said backlog maintenance in the NHS is now more than £1.1bn – the highest it has ever been.

The Scottish government last year announced a freeze on new spending for NHS capital projects amidst a £1.5bn budget black hole.

A review of the infrastructure projects pipeline is currently underway, which will determine whether these projects will ever restart.

Other big NHS construction projects, like the Barra and Vatersay Community Campus and will no longer go ahead.

The Scottish government has blamed the UK government’s failure to ‘inflation-proof its capital budget’ for the changes.

At First Minister’s Questions last week, Humza Yousaf said:

“We are having to take forward capital spending projects in the face of high inflation in construction costs but also a 10% cut to our capital budget over the next five years, which is being imposed on Scotland by the Conservatives.”

A revised infrastructure investment plan for Scotland will be published this spring.

 

Read more: Making cervical cancer a ‘rare disease’; Auditor General: Difficult choices for Scotland’s NHS

 

 

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