Frimley Park Hospital was built in in the 1970s using Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (RAAC), which makes up around 65 per cent of the current building. RAAC deteriorates overtime and is now at the end of its life, posing a potential risk to patients, visitors, and staff. The hospital wasn’t built to accommodate modern healthcare, and as it turns 50 this year, it has already exceeded it’s expected lifespan.

Building a new hospital on the current site is not a viable option as it is not possible to deliver a hospital in a phased manner by 2030, while maintaining continuity of care, and the health and wellbeing of patients. The cost of maintaining a safe environment by reinforcing existing RAAC planks is also very high and will only continue to be effective short term.

As a result, the new Frimley Park Hospital will be on a different site.

The new hospital will be built using modern methods of construction, with a view to it lasting as long as possible. It will allow for future growth of services, and the design will incorporate the learning from the best examples of national and international hospital design.

A change in Government can always bring uncertainty. We have been assured by the Department of Health and Social Care that the funding for a new Frimley Park Hospital has been allocated and we will continue to work towards our 2030 deadline.

A new £49 million building is set to be opened at Frimley Park Hospital in 2025. This extension, which is being built using modern methods of construction, will provide 74 additional, much needed inpatient beds and a new state-of-the-art diagnostic and imaging unit. This essential additional bed capacity will deliver a greatly improved environment for patients and staff.

It will also enable more efficient ward refurbishments and reduce the disruption caused by the ongoing remedial work to keep areas affected by reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) safe.

As part of our new hospital programme, a detailed analysis will be undertaken for the whole of the existing site to ensure the best possible use of the newer building areas after 2030 that do not contain any RAAC.

All RAAC areas of the old Frimley Park Hospital, which make up 65% of the site, will be demolished.

Around 65 per cent of the 50-year-old Frimley Park Hospital was built using reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete planks (RAAC), which are now known to deteriorate over time and as such Frimley Park Hospital needs to be replaced as soon as possible.

While we develop and build our new Frimley Park Hospital, we will continue with our extensive RAAC maintenance programme to keep our hospital, patients, and staff safe. This programme has been ongoing for over 10 years and the need to remove all RAAC from hospitals by 2030 is the driving force behind the new Frimley Park Hospital timeline.

Land adjacent to the current Frimley Park Hospital is not for sale, and any developable area is not big enough for us to build the state-of-the-art replacement hospital with twice the footprint of the current hospital.

We identified our priority sites as planned by February 2024 as potential locations for the new Frimley Park Hospital. We are in the process of completing detailed analysis of our priority sites, including taking into consideration feedback from our recent public engagement, as we enter into the necessary commercial elements of land acquisition that leads to the final purchase. We will share more information as soon as we are able.

Meanwhile we continue to work with all our partners on an in-depth programme schedule to open our new hospital for 2030. 

We will build a new state-of-the-art replacement for Frimley Park Hospital for 2030.

The Department of Health and Social Care requires the NHS to stop using hospital buildings constructed from RAAC by 2035 but has set a deadline of 2030 for the seven most affected hospitals, which includes Frimley Park.

The new Frimley Hospital will be a Hospital 2.0 build. This is a standardised design for future hospitals which will decrease the average time to develop and build hospitals as well as reducing the cost through economies of scale. It will also benefit patients and staff through digital solutions and an optimised hospital layout.

The new hospital will be built using modern methods of construction, with a view to it lasting as long as possible. It will allow for future growth of services, and the design will incorporate the learning from the best examples of national and international hospital design.

We are committed to a significant programme of engagement throughout our work to deliver a new Frimley Park Hospital, with patients, staff, local people, and stakeholders involved at every stage. 

Between 24 November 2023 to 7 January 2024 we held a period of initial engagement to find out what is most important to our staff, patients and communities about the new hospital, and we have now identified our priority sites.

The main concerns we received from the public were around car parking, access, and the distance from the current site.  

We have now published an independent report on the views, opinions and feedback we received during this engagement exercise. This is being carefully considered as we move forward with our process to identify potential viable sites for the new hospital. You can download our full results of the engagement exercise and read the key findings on our website.