Govt approves further health spending

Gorton in Manchester will receive a new Community Diagnostics Centre, while an expansion has been signed off for the Paddington CDC in Liverpool.

The funding for the CDCs, facilities intended to give patients access to quicker resting without the need for hospital visits, follows a round of funding announcements for five neighbourhood health centres across the North West. This was announced in late March, as the government looks to make good in its promise of pumping £26bn into the NHS.

In all, 36 CDCs will be created or enhanced in the £237m package. Four of them are new projects, and are inked in for the 2026/27 budget year.

Confirmed by NHS England as worth £1.93m, the Gorton scheme will be developed at the Gortnn Hub, and covers phase one of the Gorton CDC project. This will include dedicated ultrasound and opthalmology diagnostic suites, It will also allow phase two to be worked up.

Professor Stella Vig, national clinical director for elective care at NHS England, said: “We’re making it easier to access care, and our network of Community Diagnostic Centres deliver important diagnostic tests nearer to people’s homes, with new, expanded or enhanced centres available to patients across England.

“This expansion means even more patients can have vital checks like MRIs, CT scans and ultrasounds in a convenient location at a time that suits them, supporting the NHS’s drive to bring down waiting times even further.”

As for the neighbourhood health centres, £50m was committed by government at the end of March for 27 facilities nationally, five of them in the North West. They are at:

• Barbara Castle Way, Blackburn
• Alfred Barrow Health Centre. Barrow
• Fingerpost Park Health Centre, St Helens
• Fleetwood Health & Wellbeing Centre
• Radcliffe Primary Care Centre

These are “Wave 1” sites, selectee against three criteria: deliverability in 2026/27, strategic fit with the Neighbourhood Health Centre model, and level of local deprivation as measured by the Index of Multiple Deprivation.

All the sites exceed 10,000 sq ft NIA and in time, will have a minimum opening requirement of 8am-8pm, six days a week. The project was trailed in the Autumn Budget 2025.