The new Women and Children’s Hospital promised for Cornwall may now never be built, Secretary of State for Health Wes Streeting has admitted.

The new building, expected to cost £291 million, is now under threat as the new Labour government says it has become clear that the last government’s New Hospital Programme (NHP) has become undeliverable and unaffordable.

Cornwall’s six MPs – including its four Labour members – say they are shocked and disappointed by the news. 

The much-mooted project scheduled for completion by 2028 was to combine maternity, neonatal, paediatric and obstetric and gynaecology services into one building at the Royal Cornwall Hospital at Treliske, Truro.

The proposed Women and Children’s Hospital in Truro is one of 25 projects now in jeopardy. Others include Derriford Emergency Care Hospital in Plymouth, North Devon District Hospital in Barnstaple and Torbay Hospital.

The news has been greeted with dismay by Cornwall’s MPs who recently met health minister Karin Smyth MP to press the case for the new hospital as the top priority for healthcare in Cornwall.

Andrew George, Lib Dem MP for St Ives – speaking on behalf of all six MPs – has written to Mr Streeting saying “how alarmed” he and his colleagues are at the news.

“As well as being extremely unwelcome to the six of us, your letter will cause dismay not only amongst our NHS colleagues, but also the wider community, whose hopes had been cruelly raised by the promises of the previous government. The news is both shocking and disappointing.”