Power supply is a priority for Princess Alexandra Hospital’s £2.6m maintenance boost

The Government has given Princess Alexandra Hospital a £2.6m cash injection.

The NHS trust in charge of the Hamstel Road site has already earmarked the cash for vital maintenance and upgrades to the ageing buildings.

Bosses expect to start construction of a brand new general hospital for East Herts and West Essex from 2032.

But in the meantime, management estimates it will cost an additional £70m over the next decade - in addition to the £50m “business as usual” budget - to keep the 1960s estate operational.

Tom Burton, the trust’s chief financial and infrastructure officer, said other funding had already been requested, but the latest tranche would be directed to three key areas.

“The real priority is our electrical power supply to the estate. We have to make sure we have resilience if power ever fails.”

He said that while the current provision met minimum standards, a £900,000 project would deliver a more modern, uninterruptible power supply.

Mr Burton said: “We've also received £680,000, which we're using to improve safety around our fire doors.”

He said the current doors were compliant with legislation, but “standards always move on”.

A further £960,000 will pay for fire compartmentation works, concentrated in the basement and roof spaces.

Mr Burton said: “Every time we adapt our hospital, which we have to do many times throughout the year, changing one area potentially creates a problem somewhere else.

“With this money, we can really make sure that we're safeguarding the hospital for the foreseeable future. It's really welcome.

“We would need significantly more than that to meet all of our demands. But we do recognise how challenged the economy is at the moment.

“And we will make every pound go as far as it possibly can…but we could always use more funding.”

Mr Burton also made it clear there were limits to how much the current hospital could adapt to increasing demand over the next 10 years.

Drainage, he said, was at capacity without “much more invasive and expensive infrastructure works” and the hospital’s steam heating system would “struggle to last much beyond the 10 years that we are currently looking at”.

The trust’s chief executive, Thom Lafferty, added: “I'm tremendously grateful for the local political support that we've had for the additional funding to come into Princess Alexandra.

“I can't see that [Harlow MP] Chris Vince could be doing anything more to promote our situation about securing additional capital and so we're grateful for that as an organisation.”