Seven hospitals built mainly from reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete will remain in use beyond the date once recommended for their replacement.
They are Airedale General in West Yorkshire, Frimley Park in Surrey, Hinchingbrooke in Cambridgeshire, James Paget in Great Yarmouth, Leighton Hospital in Crewe, Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King's Lynn and West Suffolk Hospital in Bury St Edmunds.
An independent report in 2022 recommended that all seven should be replaced by 2030 at the latest. The final schemes are now due to finish in 2032–33.
The Public Accounts Committee says buildings made with RAAC are susceptible to structural failure. Serious deterioration remains possible even when problems are being monitored.
NHS officials had spent more than £500 million on the seven sites by 2025. A further £440 million is expected to follow. The money pays for maintenance and measures intended to protect staff and patients until the replacement buildings are ready.
Together, the two figures come to nearly £1 billion.
Ministers received further advice in December 2025. The seven hospitals, it said, could be used after 2030 as long as the necessary maintenance and safety work continued. There would still be operational problems, additional expense and a risk to patients.
MPs accepted that the earlier deadline was no longer achievable. They asked the government to report to Parliament every year on the replacement projects, setting out delays, added costs and any effect on people receiving or providing care.
The government agreed in its formal response.
The seven trusts will continue receiving help from NHS England's RAAC safety programme. More than £440 million in operational capital will also be shared between them over four years. Maintaining the existing buildings is one of the uses suggested by the government.
The government published the first annual report on the New Hospital Programme in July. It said the seven RAAC schemes remained a priority for 2026–27. The completion dates were not brought forward.
James Paget and West Suffolk were already included in the building programme before the government added another five hospitals in May 2023. Those five were Airedale, Frimley Park, Hinchingbrooke, Leighton and Queen Elizabeth.
Ministers said all five would be rebuilt by 2030. Several other hospital projects were pushed back when the RAAC buildings joined the programme.
When Boris Johnson launched the New Hospital Programme in 2020, he promised 40 hospitals by the end of the decade. The government counted whole buildings, new wings and substantial refurbishments towards the total.
The Public Accounts Committee returned to the programme in 2023. By then, work was behind schedule and costs had increased. Members questioned the way projects had been chosen and whether the available funding would produce hospitals of an adequate size.
A government review began the following year. The plan announced in January 2025 now covers 46 schemes, for which £60 billion is proposed. Capital expenditure accounts for £56 billion of that sum. In 2023, the maximum proposed capital funding had been £22.2 billion.
Work will continue long after the original deadline. Under the revised schedule, the final hospitals are due in 2045–46.
The National Audit Office welcomed the more realistic assumptions behind the reset. It calculated that trusts awaiting replacement buildings could spend between £100 million and £140 million each year on their old estates.
That estimate applies to trusts across the building programme, not just the seven with the largest amounts of RAAC.
The first projects using the government's standardised hospital design are scheduled to begin construction in 2027–28. Known as Hospital 2.0, the design is supposed to save trusts from drawing up individual plans for every building.
Plans include more single rooms, paperless patient records and sensors to alert staff when somebody falls. Walking distances for hospital workers are also meant to be shorter.
Trusts have raised concerns about the number of nurses required on wards containing mostly single rooms. Patients are less visible than they would be on an open ward. The Department of Health and Social Care accepts that more staff may be needed before new methods of working are established.
The plans assume that the replacement hospitals will contain about 6 per cent more overnight beds. The government also wants more patients treated through local and neighbourhood services rather than admitted to hospital. MPs have asked the department to explain how it arrived at both assumptions.
The first main wave of the standard design contains 16 schemes. Spending between 2025–26 and 2029–30 is planned at £8.9 billion, with 3 per cent held back for unexpected costs. MPs warned that trouble on an early project could affect the hospitals waiting behind it.
When the committee reported in April, outstanding repairs across the NHS estate in England were valued at £15.9 billion. The figure covered a wide range of work, from wards and roofs to heating and other infrastructure. A capital-investment strategy previously requested by MPs had yet to appear.
The seven RAAC hospitals sit within that much larger repair bill. Their replacements have to be funded while the present buildings are inspected, supported and repaired.
The 2025 assessment provides grounds for keeping the seven open after 2030. It does so on the condition that monitoring, maintenance and mitigation continue.
Patients will still be using the hospitals while that work takes place. According to the present timetable, some will be doing so in 2032.