When the new building at Royal Shrewsbury Hospital will be completed and what it will be used for, including sky gardens

Shrewsbury’s skyline is set to dramatically change again later this year when two massive cranes at the town’s acute hospital are removed.

Councillors have been given an update on progress on the Hospitals Transformation Programme (HTP), which is bringing enormous change to the NHS across Shropshire.

Matthew Neal, director of the HTP, told the joint health overview and scrutiny committee (JHOSC) that a third crane will brought in to remove the two others around which the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital (RSH) extension is being built.

“In the summer of this year our expectation is that those two cranes that are in the middle will disappear,” Mr Neal told the meeting on Friday (February 13).

“And that will probably be quite momentous because you can see them from quite a way across Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin, and Powys.”

He added that the two cranes will be taken out of the building which has been constructed around them by another one which will arrive to pluck them out.

The committee, made up of representatives of Shropshire Council, Telford & Wrekin Council and others from the community, were told that the focus is now on making the massive new building watertight.

“Hopefully in the next month or so it will be watertight,” said Mr Neal.

A team of bricklayers is on site building out around the bottom of the building.

The building itself is made of 774 concrete piles and from the beginning of March will have the air handling units lifted into place on the roof.

How the new Royal Shrewsbury Hospital building will be used & when it will be completed

The meeting also heard from Dr Ed Rysdale, HTP clinical lead and emergency medicine consultant, about how the building will be used.

It is set to take referrals from the emergency department on the ground floor, a women’s unit, a children’s ward, and maternity inpatients.

A critical care unit for the most poorly patients will be on the top floor.

This will include sky gardens where long-term patients can get a breath of fresh air.

The committee was told that the project is on track for completion by winter 2027. Completion is targeted for spring 2028.

Officials are working behind the scenes on things like staff moving sites as the RSH becomes the county’s emergency centre and Telford’s Princess Royal Hospital takes up the planned care role.

Among all the changes being considered are transporting patients between the two current acute sites, ambulance protocols, public transport routes and making more use of the community hospitals in the county.