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NHS bosses have ordered all English hospitals to verify that any dangerous concrete on their sites has been identified and that evacuation plans are in place in the latest development in the UK government’s crumbling concrete crisis.
In a letter to senior managers and board members across the health service on Tuesday, chief commercial officer Jacqui Rock and director for emergency planning Mike Prentice said senior staff must “assure yourselves as far as possible that Raac is identified and appropriately mitigated, to keep patients, staff and visitors safe”.
The letter follows days of controversy over the safety risk posed by reinforced aerated autoclaved concrete, or Raac, in schools and fears that other public buildings could contain the material.
In particular, boards of NHS Trusts must check that inspections were “sufficiently thorough and covered all buildings and areas on your estate” including non-clinical areas and buildings, Rock and Prentice added.
The letter came after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak held a meeting with representatives of government departments on Monday to try to determine the extent to which the public estate contains Raac and may need remedial work.
Surveyors are currently investigating whether Raac could be present in the House of Commons, while more than 150 schools are already known to contain the porous material. Two-thirds of these have been ordered to close sites while repair work is carried out. The government is currently trying to establish how many more schools were built with the concrete, but has conceded it could run into the hundreds.
Education secretary Gillian Keegan said on Tuesday that school leaders should “get off their backsides” and complete surveys in an effort to identify sites that may contain Raac, with around one in 20 schools failing to respond so far.
NHS England said that since 2019 it had worked closely with 27 sites containing Raac and had secured funding for “investigative, safety/remedial and replacement work”. It added that three of the sites had eradicated the material.
It also disclosed that other potential problem areas had been identified in May after all trusts had carried out checks. The service added that work to confirm or rule out the presence of Raac was expected to be completed by the end of the week.
Rock and Prentice warned that while effective management of Raac “significantly reduces associated risks . . .[it] does not completely eliminate them”.
They added that a regional evacuation plan had been created and tested in the East of England and that it was “essential” all organisations known to have Raac incorporate it into their own planning “as a matter of priority if it has not already been completed”.
The government announced in May that it was adding five Raac-affected sites to its hospital building programme, promising they would be rebuilt by 2030. Two other hospitals containing the materials were already part of the programme.
One of those added to the roster in May, Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Cambridgeshire, confirmed that since 2020 it had had to confine treatment of some heavier people to the ground floor owing to concerns about the state of the building.
“Conditions for managing patients over 19 stones continue to remain in place at Hinchingbrooke Hospital. This is due to the cumulative weight of patients, staff and equipment being more of a risk in some of our first floor clinical areas,” the trust said.
Simon Corben, director of estates and facilities at NHS England, said the health service had put “in place a national programme to support Trusts with their mitigation, monitoring and eradication programmes, in line with expert guidance from the Institution of Structural Engineers”.
The health department has said the NHS had “a mitigation plan in place for hospital buildings with confirmed Raac, backed with significant additional funding of £698mn from 2021 to 2025 “.
It added: “The technical advice received from the NHS is that the current approach to monitoring and mitigation remains appropriate.”