YESTERDAY’S announcement (20 January) is a significant delay to the original plans for a new Princess Alexandra Hospital (PAH), but it does provide “certainty” that there will be a new hospital during the next decade.

This afternoon, we went down to Princess Alexandra Hospital, to interview the Director of Estates and Strategy, Michael Meredith regarding the government announcement that the building of a new hospital would start between 2032 and 2034.

Mr Meredith and his colleagues were calling it good news. Harlow MP Chris Vince was calling it good news but we wanted to reflect the frustration of our readers, who had seen promise after promise and starting date after starting date.

We asked Mr Meredith to define good news as well as asking him about their business plan and our annual question of whether they had bought the land yet?

We still appear to be looking at the area off Junction 7a of the M11.

Hattie Llewelyn-Davies, chair of PAHT, and Thom Lafferty, chief executive at PAHT added their comments.

They said: “We are pleased that the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the Rt Hon Wes Streeting, has confirmed the government’s commitment to a new hospital for Harlow. His statement provides much-needed certainty to our people and our patients.

“The new hospital will provide an incredible opportunity to transform the care we deliver to our local populations, responding to local need.

“In the meantime, our ageing hospital estate continues to face significant and ongoing problems. Now that the start of construction for our new hospital has been delayed until 2032, we will work with system and NHS England colleagues to ensure we can maintain safe and effective facilities for our patients and staff across our current sites in the meantime.

“We would like to thank our people, our patients, our partners, and our local communities for their continued support.”

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We will publish a separate news item on the “ageing estate” on Wednesday.