PM agrees to talks on stalled A&E plans

The prime minister has said he will attend talks over a long-promised but still undelivered accident and emergency department extension.

Planning permission for the £30m work at University Hospital North Durham was approved in 2017, but cost estimates rose to between £60m and £80m for an updated scheme approved in January 2023.

Raising the issue at Prime Minister's Questions, Durham MP Mary Kelly Foy said County Durham and Darlington Trust could no longer fund the scheme.

Andy Burnham said: "I am prepared to meet to discuss the situation with hospital services in the North East and I will make sure that happens soon."

Foy called the delayed plans an "urgently needed improvement," the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.

County Durham and Darlington NHS Trust chief executive Steve Russell admitted earlier this year the existing A&E, originally designed to deal with about 30,000 patients a year but now seeing up to 79,000, was not fit for purpose.

He said: "Staff do an incredible job, but we are uncomfortable with the environment in which they work and patients receive care."

Revised proposals for the redevelopment included a two-storey extension next to the existing emergency department, but construction never began and that planning permission, like the original 2017 plan, has expired.

The trust had developed a business case for the scheme and expected to borrow the money needed to built it, however Russell said the required funding was never made available.

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