Superhospital plan shelved

Plans for one of the most expensive hospitals ever built have fallen through, the Evening Standard can reveal.

The £1 billion hospital would have taken in services from three major London hospitals and Imperial College on to one site in west London.

The plan was to move services from Harefield, the Royal Brompton, St Mary's and an Imperial College facility to land next to Paddington station.

Health chiefs said the scheme was desperately needed to replace old buildings at St Mary's and to save money.

The projected move caused huge rows among staff reluctant to move from Harefield, in Hillingdon. They include doctors who believed services would be disrupted and local people who did not want to lose their hospital.

But now the company selling the land for the new hospital has pulled out. Its managers say they were fed up with delays from the health service and are now looking at other options for the land.

The news will cause embarrassment at the highest levels of government after Tony Blair praised the scheme in the Commons. He called it "an extraordinary, imaginative design" with "state-of-the-art facilities".

But a row developed over the price of the 3.2 acres, which rocketed to ?148 million. Paddington Development Corporation Ltd has withdrawn from negotiations with the Paddington Health Campus team and has submitted a claim for its legal costs.

More than ?7 million has been spent on consultant fees and it is understood the hospitals will have to come up with that money.

A spokesman for PDCL, which includes firms Pearcroft, Multiplex and the Reuben brothers, said: "We have no ongoing discussions with the Paddington Health Campus team or the Strategic Health Authority to build a hospital on our land. We are pursuing other plans for the 3.2 acres."

However, the Department of Health said: "The decision by PDCL to withdraw from the development agreement should not affect the immediate future of the Paddington Health Campus project and does not mean the end of the scheme.

"The corporation has confirmed it will resume negotiations with the project team should the scheme be given the green light."

It added that the department expected, by the end of this month, new details on a possible deal involving Westminster council swapping land with PDCL and hoped to make a decision on whether to approve it by mid-May.

But the PDCL spokesman hit back, saying: "We have no intention of re-entering any negotiations with the health campus people or the health department, which we believe never intended for this to go ahead anyway.

"Under our contract, PDCL is entitled to recover ?300,000 of its costs and we are claiming ?260,000 of that. An additional ?1.5million has been spent by PDCL on this scheme and it will never be recovered."

Campaigner Jean Brett said: "The Paddington Health Campus scheme is dead. The only reason we have not had a formal statement from the Department of Health on this is because of the grievous embarrassment to the Government during an election campaign.

"This is a victory for people power - 180,000 people were against this plan."

Paddington Health Campus said: "As far as we are concerned the scheme is still very much alive. We are submitting fresh papers to the Department of Health for consideration shortly."