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During the height of the Covid pandemic, the Chief Executive of NHS England, Amanda Pritchard, has revealed that the UK government blocked a request to fund an additional 10,000 hospital beds. Pritchard informed the UK Covid-19 inquiry that the decision, taken by the Treasury in July 2020, was “very disappointing.” If approved, the extra beds and staff would have been used to reduce waiting lists for planned care and enhance the NHS’s resilience against a second winter wave of the pandemic.
According to Pritchard, a request was made to the government in July 2020 for an additional 10,000 permanent, staffed hospital beds. The request was made based on modelling the virus’s spread and the need to deal with additional pressures expected in the coming winter, such as more planned surgery and other treatments for non-Covid patients.
The Treasury and the Prime Minister’s private office refused the request, stating that they wanted more use to be made of the temporary Nightingale hospitals along with the private sector. The decision would be re-evaluated in the autumn of 2021 as part of a more comprehensive spending review, Pritchard was told.
The Chief Executive of NHS England called the decision “very disappointing”, saying that waiting lists for planned NHS treatment in England would be in “quite a different position” had the additional funding been authorised. The summer of 2020 saw the NHS in England with a total permanent capacity of approximately 95,000 beds to treat acute patients. This was increased by another 4,000 from winter 2023 under a recovery plan agreed by former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak
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