FAQs

Around 65% 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.

Our current hospital has around 8,500 RAAC planks, including in some of our most key areas: our operating theatres, intensive care unit, wards, and corridors.

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.

We’re pleased to open a brand-new extension on the current hospital site — a significant investment that brings real improvements for patients and staff. The new building includes 74 much-needed inpatient beds and a state-of-the-art diagnostic and imaging unit. This will increase bed capacity, reduce imaging waiting times, and provide a more efficient environment for ward refurbishments. It also helps mitigate disruptions caused by our ongoing remedial and maintenance work on areas affected by reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC).

This extension addresses the clear and growing needs of our population right now, allowing us to provide high-quality care on the current site for at least the next five years. There will be an opportunity to still use our hospital’s high-quality buildings, like this extension, after our new hospital has opened, as part of wider health and care transformation plans to provide care closer to home. These plans are in the early stages of development.

We remain committed to improving care for patients today while we continue to shape the future of services for tomorrow and we will keep our communities informed and involved as our future plans develop.

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

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. The future use of the non-RAAC-affected estate will be subject to review.

Frimley Park Hospital was built in the 1970s using RAAC which 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.

More information on how we are looking for a new site can be found through the site selection process and timeline.

The Trust is undertaking a continued level of due diligence on a number of preferred sites to complete legal and planning analysis before any further decisions can be made.

We have entered into confidentiality agreements with the landowners of our preferred sites. To protect those agreements, we cannot disclose further information relating to the sites or their locations while we continue our due diligence.

All of the general hospital services will continue to be provided at the new hospital site including A&E, intensive care, maternity and children’s hospital services, surgery, and our other existing services. There will be additional engagement opportunities in the future for us to discuss these services with our local community and staff, including the introduction of virtual and community appointments to reduce coming into hospital unnecessarily.

We are a Trust that stands out in many ways as an employer, and we know just how important our employees are to what we do. We’ve worked hard to create a Trust where staff will know that they are valued, respected and rewarded. Before the new hospital opens, we will have a recruitment drive so new staff can begin their journey, and our existing employees can excel, develop and progress their careers. At the moment we do not know staffing numbers for the new hospital, however we will continue to engage with our staff throughout the whole process.

We fully expect our military partnership to continue. Frimley Health has celebrated over 27 years with the military, and we will continue to maintain an excellent relationship with the Armed Forces. We are working closely with the Ministry of Defence and others who share our current site and who could share any future site.

A change in Government can always bring uncertainty. We have been assured by the Government that all RAAC schemes are exempt from their review of the national new hospital programme.

This means that the funding for a new Frimley Park Hospital has been allocated and we will continue to work towards our 2030 deadline.

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. This is going to be a modern hospital fit for the 21st century so it will be fully sustainable.

The new Frimley Park Hospital is part of the national Hospital 2.0 design programme. This means that inpatient areas will feature a larger number of single, ensuite rooms with communal social areas for patients, so they don’t feel isolated.

Single occupancy rooms offer significant infection control and privacy and dignity benefits, for example a consultation with patients is easier on a one-to-one basis. To accommodate the single rooms, the new hospital will be larger than the current Frimley Park Hospital.

We will continue to explore all the options as we move forward through our planning stages to ensure we have the right mix for our patients and staff. As part of our engagement process, we be sharing more information about the new hospital and the Hospital 2.0 programme in due course.

We know that traffic congestion is an issue at the current Frimley Park Hospital.

A detailed ‘highways assessment’ would be used to evaluate the impact of any potential new site on the current road infrastructure. This would take into account the suitability of potential sites in terms of access by road, rail, walking, and cycling, plus a secondary access point for ambulances.

As part of our initial engagement period, feedback showed the public also recognised this as a priority and that the consideration for future car parking was also of paramount importance, including that of our car park which would also be a 2.0 design to optimise space.

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 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.