Construction firm's award angers hospital campaigners

Martin Shipton

Campaigners who fought against the siting of a new cancer centre have expressed shock and outrage that the scheme has won a prestigious award for collaboration between the public and private sectors.

The New Velindre Cancer Centre in Cardiff, which is currently under construction and is due to open in 2027, has been hugely controversial.

It is being built on the site of a well-loved green space called the Northern Meadows and many doctors have said that it should have been co-located with a general hospital.

It was also revealed that two of the companies involved in the Acorn Consortium that is building New Velindre - Sacyr and Kajima - had convictions for bid-rigging in their respective home countries of Spain and Japan.

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'Excellence'

Yet a statement on the project’s website says: “We’re delighted to share that our New Velindre Cancer Centre project has been recognised on the international stage.

“The project won the ‘Best Healthcare Project’ at this year’s Partnerships Awards.

“This prestigious award celebrates excellence in public-private sector collaboration across the UK and internationally. Winning in the competitive healthcare category is a milestone for the project and a reflection of the dedication, innovation, and teamwork that has brought us to this point.

“The awards described the project as ‘a paradigm shift in sustainable healthcare, providing cutting-edge facilities and treatment in a building designed with sustainable material innovation, community inclusion, and a commitment to preserving the environment.’

“The award recognises both the design and ambition of our project, alongside the partnership between the [Velindre University NHS] Trust, the consortium helping build our new cancer centre Acorn and our construction partners Sacyr.”

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'Thrilled'

Project Director David Powell said: “We are absolutely thrilled to have won this award. It reflects the huge amount of hard work, determination and collaboration from everyone involved - from our staff, the project team, our colleagues at Acorn and Sacyr and the communities who continue to shape and support our development.

"Our New Velindre Cancer Centre will support innovation in treatment, provide a modern, therapeutic space for patients and staff, and act as a beacon of sustainability in healthcare design.”

However, a spokesperson for local groups that opposed the project’s siting said: “Local residents, having suffered years of disruption from the construction of New Velindre, are shocked and in disbelief that such poor delivery can reap any rewards. Yet a body seeking privatisation of the NHS, it seems, is ready to commend the venture for its ‘partnership’, ‘collaboration’ and nurturing of ‘relationships’ and ‘community inclusion'. The reality on the ground is very different.

“Residents close by have endured months of noisy evening and nighttime building work, hundreds of HGVs daily passing very close to schools, and construction traffic failing to keep to the constructor’s own traffic management plans for children’s safety when walking to school.

“Partnerships Awards, the group making the award, is not an industry quality assurance body, but mainly an alliance for promoting private finance initiatives. Its approval of the project has especially staggered residents on the housing estate bordering the development. Nation.Cymru has already reported complaints that the constructor, Sacyr, failed to enforce Cardiff council planning conditions to keep children safe on footpaths crossed by construction HGVs.

“In addition, the community has reported work in evenings and deep into, or even through, the night. This for many months, along with powerful industrial lights shining into residents’ windows. The extended working hours originally just appeared unannounced and without explanation.“Sacyr is reportedly on schedule for a 2027 completion date. Hence critics find it hard to see any reason for extreme hours by this regime. Is it perhaps, some ask, due rather to some party’s pursuit of delivery bonus payments? Or is it something else, nonetheless hidden from the public?”

'Aloof'

The spokesperson added: “Critics also view sceptically the alleged attention to ‘relationships’ and ‘community inclusion’, as Sacyr is seen as aloof and unresponsive to desperate community concerns and distress. Only after sustained protest and publicity do concerns seem to be acknowledged (or more likely deflected).

“Sacyr’s failure to keep to its own traffic management plan is also seen as unworthy of an award for ‘community inclusion’ and nurturing of ‘relationships’. Up to 100 construction lorry journeys now pass through a residential area when there’s an alternative route off a motorway junction.

“The words “collaboration” “partnership” and “relationships” used of this project on the Partnership Awards website are a mockery. Those stunned at them are often people already among the hardest hit by disadvantage and financial struggle.

“Local people’s lives are being made a misery by this construction work. Surely Sacyr and Velindre must have some idea of the distress they have caused the local community. So how could Velindre and Sacyr’s management teams even begin to think it was a good idea to attend this self-congratulatory, dressing-up event at a London hotel?

“Many also contest the key claim about the project in the Partnership Awards judges’ report. Especially galling is the assertion that the new Velindre has a commitment to preserving the environment.’ Critics complain bitterly that use of sustainable materials, however laudable, is no substitute for the standard required from such a project, namely net environmental gain for nature and habitat. They see the site destruction and time-limited mitigations as a grave net loss.

“This viewpoint sees New Velindre mitigations and sustainable design features as no more than a sticking plaster slapped over a corpse, a particularly blatant form of greenwashing, with a high, net environmental cost. On this point, respected naturalist lolo Williams said that this ‘is just about the last wild area left in the whole of Cardiff’ and pleaded for it to be saved.

“Other critics, tracking the project’s NHS procurement process, are equally astounded at this award. It was only last year that a Senedd committee exposed confusion rather than collaboration between the key partners in the project’s procurement programme. Sacyr and Kajima, lead companies in the project’s consortium, emerged as less collaborative than the award suggests. In their home countries both parent companies had received a guilty verdict for major fraud (‘bid-rigging’) often associated with organised crime, but the UK branches, seemingly, were not in a rush to disclose this.”

"This conclusion seems unavoidable, going by official testimony. At the Senedd Public Accounts and Public Administration Committee, on May 8 2024, the Wales NHS Executive admitted that it was unaware of either bid-rigging case until summer 2023. Yet New Velindre’s management reported to the same Committee that it learnt of Sacyr’s unwelcome legal status much earlier, in July 2022 though only from its own lawyers who fortuitously had an office in Spain.

“It appears then, that the Acorn Consortium’s acclaimed spirit of collaboration and relationship-nurturing had not extended to collegial candour with its contracting partner over serious status developments. As Acorn went after the tender, its partners had to be updated by other channels.”