Patients in Luton face wait for £25m diagnostic centre until June 2027
Health Secretary Wes Streeting said the facility is expected to open in the “first half of 2027”.
Luton patients might have to wait until June 2027 before seeing the benefits of a new £25 million diagnostic centre.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting said the facility, which will include CT and DEXA scanners, and endoscopy services, is expected to open in the “first half of 2027”.
“I want to get it open as early as possible in the new year,” he told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS)
“I would rather under-promise and over-deliver rather than have to come back blushing because we’re later than I’d said.”
The investment forms part of a wider £237 million government programme to expand Community Diagnostic Centres (CDCs) across England, aimed at improving access to tests and reducing pressure on hospitals.
“What we’ve seen across the country is that where we’re opening new community diagnostic centres… we’re seeing people getting easier, more convenient, and faster access, to diagnosis,” he said. “And therefore faster access to treatment.”
The health secretary pointed to wider improvements in NHS performance, including a “reduction of 13,800 cases” on local waiting lists since Labour came to power, and said services were “moving in the right direction”.
The LDRS asked whether the drops in waiting list and other improvements he mentioned were a result of measures put in place by the former government.
“Some community diagnostic centres had opened under the previous government and are making a difference,” he replied.
“I would say that community diagnostic centres were one of the few things that the Conservatives did that actually worked.
“I’m not going to be churlish about that and therefore just junk an idea just because it happened under the previous government.
“We are expanding community diagnostic centres and we are delivering new community diagnostic centres because they’re proven to work.”
Mr Streeting said over 100 CDCs are now open at evenings and at weekends as well.
He also highlighted national increases in NHS staffing, including more doctors and nurses, when asked whether the new facility would be fully staffed, “we are investing in staff,” he said.
“Let’s be honest, the Labour government hasn’t been universally popular with every decision we’ve taken.
“So, I hope that the fact that people can see the NHS moving in the right direction, the fact that we’ve got this investment going in to Luton will reassure people who voted Labour at the last general election that that was the right choice.
“Even those people who didn’t vote for us, I hope that they will look at this and think, ‘well, I might not have voted Labour, but you can always trust Labour with the NHS’.
“That’s our record, that’s our history and now we’re going to build an NHS that’s fit for the future as well,” he said.
The Luton centre is one of four new CDCs planned across England, alongside sites in Manchester, Boston, and Bideford, with a further 32 centres set to be expanded or enhanced.
CT scanners are used to provide cross-section images of the inside of a body, DEXA scanners measure bone density and assess conditions such as osteoporosis.