SO it is true. Robbie Moore has not secured funding for the rebuild of Airedale Hospital, as he so confidently proclaimed.

Airedale Hospital is of the utmost importance to people in this district, and this claim played an important part in Robbie Moore’s election campaign and its consequent success. Unbelievably, the claim is still posted outside his office in Keighley.

But now the truth is out – Rachel Reeves, Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced loud and clear to Parliament, and to the world, “the money is not there”.

This was just another example of the Conservative Party’s unfunded promises.

During the election campaign many people said to me that Robbie Moore is a good MP. I am afraid these people have been fooled and Robbie Moore is now having to grovel to other MPs in the area, including the newly-elected Labour MP in Shipley, to help ensure that the Labour Government finds the funds for this most important project. I sincerely hope they do, but it will be no thanks to Robbie Moore.

Wendy Neville, chair, Craven branch of Keighley and Ilkley Labour Party

 

BEFORE the last election I warned that there were no costings for the new hospital at Airedale and no clear allocation of funding. I was therefore very worried that pre-election promises of a complete rebuild might not be delivered.

I didn’t expect to be proved right so quickly by the new Government. The decision to authorise a rebuild is now being reviewed.

Any pause in the construction of this new facility will be incredibly dangerous. RAAC concrete doesn’t stop crumbling because the new Government wants to review decisions taken by the last one. The best date that the new hospital could have been completed by was 2030. Any delay means trying to hold the building up with supports for longer than those six years and that must create a serious risk of closure.

Patching up and partial improvement are simply inadequate to meet the scale of the challenge of dealing with the consequences of poor quality building materials being used in the construction.

Airedale Hospital is a vital facility covering a huge area and a large population. It needs a complete rebuild and we don’t have the luxury of taking time to undertake further reviews.

I wonder how many people who voted for the new Government in the last election expected that their reward would be delays and dither over unavoidable reconstruction of our local hospital and the risk of no new hospital at all.

Councillor Andy Brown, Green Party, Cononley

 

WITH regard to the temporary halt to the New Hospital Programme, including our local Airedale Hospital.

The various minutes of the Airedale Hospital board over the last year clearly show they kept the new hospital build as a red (highest level) risk and recent minutes show that they were aware, along with other hospitals in the National Hospital Programme (NHP), that the project had still not been signed off by the Treasury and thus there was no clarity re: the financing. These are publicly available documents.

Robbie Moore has consistently said he had secured the funds for the new build. However, clearly the hospital board and senior management team were not confident that these assurances amounted to anything tangible.

The Airedale NHS Foundation Trust public board papers for the meeting of September 6, 2023, indicate that one of the most significant factors leading to the high-risk scores for both impact and likelihood of the NHP not delivering to timescale was the lack of clarity on the funding settlement.

By June, 2024, the board minutes indicate no progress had been made in reducing the likelihood nor the consequent impact if Airedale could not realise the ambition for future service provision to the local population, resulting in a potential loss of local services which would also impact on other providers. Clearly the MP’s assurances that funding had been secured was not enough to give the board confidence to reduce the risk.

The Labour candidate, John Grogan, became aware in the run up to the general election that the funds had not in fact been secured, as they had not been signed off by the Treasury, and he made this information public. Tory MP and chair of the Conservative Party, Richard Holden, visited the constituency on June 18 this year and appeared to confirm this. On video he said “there is still lots to do including getting the go ahead for the multi-hundreds of millions rebuild of Airedale Hospital”. Robbie Moore continued to campaign saying he had secured the funds when clearly the hospital was being told by the NHP that the money was not yet in the Conservatives’ Treasury budgets. This has sadly been confirmed by the new Chancellor Rachel Reeves.

The new Health Minister, Wes Streeting, has said he will urgently meet with MPs from areas impacted by the hospitals review decision, and that hospitals such as Airedale which are struggling with historic RAAC will be at the top of his priority list in the review. For the sake of all residents and NHS staff we can only hope that our MP will finally accept that his assurances were based on nothing tangible and work constructively with the relevant ministers, NHP and Airedale to find a way forward.

Jan Smithies, Braithwaite Village

* Email your letters to alistair.shand@keighleynews.co.uk