New ward planned at Peterborough City Hospital ease pressure on bed numbers following 24-hour A&E waits

Peterborough City Hospital has applied for retrospective planning permission for a new 20-bed ward to ease the pressure on services and maintain current care levels.

The two-storey modular building will be located on a section of the current car park, to the south of the site, and construction is expected to begin in the next month and finish by the end of the year.

The hospital currently has 635 inpatient beds but is seeking to increase its capacity before the winter.

Documents submitted in support of the application detail the problem. They state: “Inpatient beds across the trust operate at very high occupancy and as a result there is a continuous queue of patients in A&E waiting for a bed.

"Some patients are experiencing journey times in A&E well in excess of 24 hours and these tend to be older people. The trust has already increased bed capacity within the constraints of its existing facilities but there remains a significant gap between the demand and capacity for inpatient beds.”

The new building is considered the quickest solution by the North West Anglia Foundation Trust, which runs the hospital.

The increased bed capacity is planned to free up beds in the main hospital to prevent a care emergency.

In July 2022, the trust was ranked bottom of the national league table for patients having to wait longer than four hours in A&E and in the bottom ten for time patients were forced to wait in the back of an ambulance because there was no space in A&E to offload them.

The trust says that it has made progress since July but that there remains “a lot more to do to get performance to where it needs to be and to reduce the risk to patients.”

David Moss, Director of Estates and Facilities at North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust, which runs Peterborough City said: “Work is expected to commence on the two-storey modular building next month and the completion date is set for the end of the year. This will provide much-needed additional bed space to help us care for more patients.”