The NHS is ‘unable to meet the needs’ of Wycombe Hospital’s ‘high risk’ maintenance backlog, ex MP Steve Baker warned the previous government in a private memo, which has now been released.

The former Conservative MP for Wycombe wrote to then health secretary Steve Barclay about the £100 million backlog of repairs facing the hospital in December 2022, stressing that ‘the fabric of the building is now in a critical condition’.

In his letter on House of Commons notepaper, Baker tells his Conservative colleague that around £80 million of necessary repair work is classed as ‘high risk’, including that on the hospital’s 1960s tower, which houses cardiac and intensive care units.

He says the eight-storey block is under ‘constant surveillance to track potential degradation of its concrete columns and cladding, both of which are now moving’.

In one section of the letter, Baker warns that NHS England’s available capital funding is not enough to fix immediate safety issues or to replace the hospital with new facilities. He writes: “The annual allocation for the local system covering the whole of Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and West Berkshire is circa £100 million, so is unable to meet the needs of this risk.”

Written nearly two years ago, Baker’s letter is one of several documents detailing his conversations about Wycombe Hospital with central government.

The partially redacted papers, which have been released under freedom of information laws this month, also include the reply to Baker’s letter from Lord Markham, a junior health minister at the time.

Writing at the beginning of last year, Lord Markham revealed that there had been 128 expressions of interest in the government’s process of selecting eight new projects to join its hospital-building programme.

Among them were Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust’s bid for £200 million to build a ‘new purpose-built planned care centre’ on the Wycombe Hospital site.

The trust claimed this would have ‘brought all our theatres together enabling us to see more patients more quickly, helping to clear the elective backlog and providing a better experience for patients and staff’.

However, its funding bid was ultimately rejected in May last year in a decision it called ‘disappointing’.

Another document released by the Department of Health this month was an email it received from Baker’s office in January 2023, which suggested that financial red tape was preventing the trust from securing the funds for a new hospital in Wycombe.

It read: “Steve has asked me to get in touch as the Secretary of State has agreed to meet with him to discuss changing the accounting rules related to NHS trust spending that has locked up capital for Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust and, subsequently, is preventing a new hospital being built in Wycombe.”

Another released document was an email chain between Baker’s office and the department to arrange a meeting between him, fellow Bucks MP Greg Smith and health minister, Andrew Stephenson at the end of April 2024, in order to discuss the situation regarding Wycombe Hospital.

Several months later, Baker discussed his work to secure funding for the hospital in an interview with the Bucks Free Press ahead of the July 4 general election, in which he was ousted as Wycombe MP by Labour’s Emma Reynolds.

He told the newspaper: “I am well down the road with the Department of Health and Number 10 towards getting the money.

“The tower block will have to be replaced, but the future of Wycombe Hospital is secure. What needs to happen is to expand the surgical centre, and maintain and improve the heart and stroke care.”