The cash needed to make a new Watford hospital a reality has been thrown into doubt once again by an email in which health chiefs admit 'a real problem in taking new hospitals to conclusion'.
The email puts a question mark over the way new hospitals are funded because they depend on cash from the private sector and 'none of the banks have any money'.
The Watford Health Campus, due to be built in 2015, has a price tag of £300million whi
ch will come from a private finance initiative, or PFI.
The prospect of a new hospital has been held up as compensation for the haemorrhaging of services from Hemel Hempstead.
But the email, sent out to NHS managers following a meeting with the Secretary of State for Health Alan Johnson, describes a 'capital desert' in 2010/11.
Graham Eccles, chairman of the South East Coast Strategic Health Authority, writes: "The bad news is around capital schemes that would have been PFIs.
"PFI's have always been the NHS's 'Plan A' for building new hospitals...There was never a 'Plan B'.
"Now none of the banks have any money or are likely to have any for a few years, the absence of a 'Plan B' is going to cause a real problem in taking new hospitals to conclusion."
MP Mike Penning, who is a shadow health minister, said closures in Hemel Hempstead should be halted until the future of the new Watford hospital was secure.
"There is clearly a major doubt over the PFI," he said.
"If there is any doubt about money how can you continue with the closures in Hemel?"
Doubt was first cast over the new Watford hospital in December when campus chiefs sent out an internal memo entitled 'Effects of the credit crunch on the hospital' with the advice 'not to panic'.
A promised new hospital in Hatfield fell by the wayside in 2007 because of a lack of cash.
In a statement West Herts Hospitals NHS Trust said: "Plans for the new hospital at Watford are progressing well despite the credit crunch."
