Plans for an estimated £50 million energy centre to power the Royal Group of Hospitals are on indefinite hold amid rising costs and delays to the opening of the new maternity building and construction of the children’s facility.
The multi-storey centre, in planning stage for more than six years, was to replace an existing boiler plant described in documents as nearing the end of its useful life.
Planning documents closely linked the construction of the new power plant and its original 2024 completion date to the new ten-storey children’s hospital on the site of Bostock House, a tower block that once housed student nurses.
Work will only start on the children’s facility next year and is unlikely to be completed before 2030.
In a statement, Belfast Trust said it has “paused the building of a proposed new energy centre as tender prices were significantly over approval levels”.
“We are reviewing long-term solutions for energy provision on the Royal Hospitals site while new and emerging technologies are developed and come on to the market,” the trust added.
“Energy provision will be one of the considerations on any future new developments on the Royal Hospitals site.”
Requests for bids to build the centre were published in 2022, though preparatory work began as early as 2019.
This halt to further development of the project follows the admission that work on the children’s facility will only start next year and not be completed before 2030.
Further, the opening of the five-floor maternity unit completed in March is delayed, possibly for years, after a high level of a bacteria pseudomonas was discovered in the water system.
It was originally planned to open in 2015.
A total of £184m has been spent on the new maternity and children’s facilities.
The trust did not directly address whether there was a link between the delays over the two facilities opening and the decision to halt the development of the energy centre, including whether there is now less time pressure on upgrading the power supply.
However, planning documents state that the “proposed...(centre)....will replace the existing boiler plant at the Royal Hospital Belfast that is nearing the end of its useful life”.
The centre “is required to meet and safeguard the growing energy demand at the hospital to serve current, proposed and future developments”.
It also required “to be onstream before the new Children’s Ward is completed, to allow sufficient time for testing and switchover”.
The target date for completion was 2024.
Meanwhile, leaking pipes are responsible for £4m worth of damage to the Acute Mental Health Inpatient Centre at Belfast City Hospital, the BBC has reported.
The water has dripped from pipes since 2022 leading to corrosion within the hot water system and damage to walls and floors.
Belfast Trust said a refurbishment and redecoration project has started, which it estimates could cost millions of pounds.
