Cash-strapped Royal Free Hospital is having more than £2 million cut from its budget to fund the building of six new hospitals across London, it was revealed this week.

In what the government is claiming to be 'the largest hospital building programme in the history of the NHS', six new Private Finance Initiative hospitals are set to be built using NHS money previously set aside for education and training.

Under the plans, the Royal Free in Hampstead will lose £2.1m from its £33m training budget, which is used to teach nurses, midwives, doctors, undergraduate medical students and other staff.

This fund is separate from the training the trust carries out for non-medical services such as customer care.

The money which is being taken away was intended to train nursing assistants who wish to become nurses, and pay half the salaries of doctors in training.

Andrew Way, chief executive of The Royal Free Hampstead NHS Trust, said: "We are currently reviewing the consequences of this decision and its impact on clinical services.

"We are assessing how we can make the necessary savings without it having an impact. This will be discussed at the board meeting in September and any decisions will be deferred until then."

Arthur Brill, chairman of the Royal Free's Patient and Public Involvement Forum said: "I think it's an absolute and utter disgrace that they are taking away money from hospital training programmes to build unnecessary hospitals.

"They never even consulted us. The Government needs to cater for the needs of the local community which it's certainly not doing at the moment."

The six new hospitals will have more single rooms than traditional NHS hospitals and the first is expected to open in 2010.

  • The trust's current deficit for 2006-07, which it aims to pay back this year, is £16.2m.