Bridgend hospital's roof repairs to cost £20m as building faces £40m maintenance backlog
Repairing the rotting roof at the Princess of Wales Hospital in Bridgend has been estimated to cost around £20million.
Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board chief executive Paul Mears discussed the challenges the hospital is facing at a Bridgend County Borough Council meeting held on 23 October.
The health board declared a critical incident at the start of October after it said a survey discovered rot in the beams which support the roof, with almost 200 patients initially affected and the hospital's operations affected.
Speaking at the meeting CEO Mears described how the roof was found to be degraded after an intrusive survey, with roofing batons rotted and completely disintegrated in some places, leaving around 10,000 square metres of roofing "completely compromised".
He added that negotiations were now underway to finalise a contract for the work to be carried out at the site, which would hopefully see a phased completion starting in November 2024 and finishing by the summer of 2025.
It was also revealed in the meeting that a previous survey that had been carried out on the roof in 2019 had showed "significant risk" with its concrete tiles reaching the end of their life. Councillor Ian Spiller said: "If you've had a report done in 2019 which highlights a significant risk, surely you plan for this in future budgets and surely if you know that there's a problem you do everything you can to mitigate it."
The chief executive responded by saying that with only around £8m worth of capital allocation across all of its facilities in the health board area each year, and a £40million backlog of maintenance issues at the Princess of Wales Hospital alone, priorities of how to use resources had to be made.
It was also noted that the health board is now speaking with Welsh Government for funding towards the estimated £20m needed to carry out the full roof replacement.
At the meeting, Mr Mears also apologised for the disruption which has been caused to both staff and patients in the area.
He said: "I would very much be happy to apologise to staff who've had a lot of disruption to deal with on a daily basis, the patients and their families who've been disrupted, and also the wider community who have clearly been impacted."
It comes after one worker at the hospital, who we are calling "Sarah", told ITV Wales she has seen "dead birds, vegetation and tomato plants" growing in the hospital’s guttering, and claimed that the rotting roof, and its consequences, were worse than what was disclosed publicly by Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board. The health board strong denies those claims.