Replace The Belford Hospital

A replacement for the Belford Hospital in Fort William has FINALLY seen some progress in the last few months, after being pledged over a decade ago by the SNP. We are now being told that it will be built by 2028 at a new location at An Aird, near the town’s police station and high school. You can find out more about the plans on the NHS Highland website.

This is excellent news, but the SNP should not be rewarded after their endless delays and lack of transparency surrounding funding for the project - which has been confirmed will lead to at least another two year delay to the start of the build. Further, the ongoing centralisation of healthcare services by the SNP continues to raise questions about what service model the new facility will provide - it won't have a maternity ward for example. It's also not clear how many beds there will be - this is a particular concern, because there's a real shortage of care home beds in Lochaber. We also need a High Dependency Unit, a permanent MRI scanner and an endoscopy room, and at the moment there are not enough parking places factored into the plan.

Until ground is broken, we will continue to keep the pressure on them to deliver a replacement for the Belford that serves our fantastic local NHS staff, wider community and growing tourist industry properly.

We continue to call on the SNP government to:

• Announce and commit to a timetable for the Belford Hospital replacement.
• Provide adequate funding to make sure they don't miss any more deadlines to start the build.
• Provide greater transparency on the service model and why seemingly key services are missing from the plan.