THE leader of a Basingstoke political party said she shares Basingstoke’s ‘pain and frustration’ that funds to build a new hospital for the town were not included in the Spring Budget.

The Women’s Equality Party Basingstoke launched a petition which was signed by more than 900 people calling for MP Maria Miller to ‘prove’ that funding to build a new hospital for the town exists and for this to be included in writing in the Spring Budget.

READ MORE: Basingstoke Gazette launches campaign to 'Build Our Hospital' 

Speaking following the budget on March 6, Stacy Hart, the Women’s Equality Party borough council election candidate for Hatch Warren and Beggarwood, said: “After years of cuts, the infrastructure that the whole country depends on is utterly broken.

"Maria Miller MP is Basingstoke’s biggest local power holder, and our campaign asked her to advocate on residents’ behalf to have the £900m hospital funding – that she has promised us again and again is already secure – put in writing. She did not do this.”

She said Dame Maria has “no answer to this issue except repeated lines on unwritten government commitments, and about the local NHS being confident that funding will be available”.

She added: “Sadly, it is not the local NHS that provides funding: it is the Conservative government. After months of Dame Maria’s claims that the money is secured, as of this Spring Budget, there is still an utter lack of any concrete government spending plans to back them up.”

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Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (HHFT), which is running a public consultation on plans for a new hospital for Basingstoke, said that questions about funding need to be answered by the government’s Department for Health and Social Care.

It has confirmed it received some ‘enabling funds’ for the programme, but said that the main build will be covered by the post-2030 funding allocation. 

A statement from the trust said: “We do not have any further information around the timings of future government spending reviews.”

Alex Whitfield, the chief executive of HHFT, received a letter from DHSC offering reassurance over funding for a new hospital.

Stacy added: “The political choice of this Government to let infrastructure crumble, in some cases literally, over the last 14 years, has and will continue to have devastating and ruinous impacts on people’s lives all over the country.

"WE Basingstoke will carry on the work of holding those with power to account for what Basingstoke needs as we continue the campaign to get Basingstoke’s hospital built.”