The building of the first NHS Nightingale hospital in just nine days last year showed what is possible in a pandemic. It was a remarkable achievement. Natalie Forrest, who led the London initiative, is now overseeing the building of 48 new NHS hospitals, which is the biggest such programme since the 1960s. The cost could reach £24 billion.
A former nurse, Forrest rose to prominence after supervising the four-year rebuilding of Chase Farm Hospital, London, where she was chief executive and director of nursing. Her new challenge is one of the most daunting in the NHS.
Few buildings are more complex and costly than hospitals. In his book, Anatomy of a Hospital, Julian Ashley says that a large provincial hospital includes some ten million bricks (enough for 900 homes), 12,000 rooms, two-and-a-half miles of corridors and a floor area totalling 55 acres, not to mention a dazzling array of medical technology.