Under the agreement, the government will provide funding for the remainder of the building work at Midland Metropolitan Hospital. The new hospital will be built by 2022.

When completed, Midland Metropolitan will be the first new hospital in England’s second largest urban area since 2010. The new hospital will have:

• state-of-the-art diagnostic equipment
• 15 operating theatres
• at least 669 beds

It will be an acute centre for the care of adults and children, as well as offering maternity care and specialised surgery to approximately 750,000 residents.

Construction work had begun on Midland Metropolitan Hospital, part of Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust, under a private finance programme. Work was halted when the firm carrying out the work, Carillion, went into liquidation earlier this year. Since then, the trust and the government have worked closely together to reach a resolution.

Health Minister Stephen Barclay said:

Our long-term plan for the NHS will see it receive £20.5 billion a year more than it currently does by 2023, but our commitment does not stop there, as this important partnership shows.

We are not only giving patients in Sandwell and west Birmingham world-class NHS facilities on their doorstep, but also showing our determination to build an NHS fit for the future – all whilst making sure taxpayers’ money is spent in the best possible way.

Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust Chief Executive, Toby Lewis, said:

This is absolutely fantastic news. After a huge amount of work by teams across Whitehall and the Trust, and with the voices of local residents, clinicians, and stakeholders having been clearly heard, we are delighted that we now have a definitive, publicly financed plan. We will continue to engage with the construction market over coming weeks and build towards a formal procurement by November this year. We always said Midland Met would be delivered and the doubters were wrong. The Prime Minister’s promise is being honoured.

Midland Met will open in 2022, and by then our partnerships with local GPs, schools and care homes will be even deeper and more integrated than today. This is a vote of confidence in our publicly financed construction plan, and in our Sustainability and Transformation Plan as a whole. The new hospital is about improving the outcomes of patient care and about regeneration and public health. We need to finish the job and seize the benefits.

The changes to fees will take effect from 1 October 2018 and all fees will be inclusive of VAT.

Fees are determined by:

• the area of application
• the number of boreholes
• the number of mine entries to be investigated or treated

The minimum fee for any application will be £111.00.

Area of application

For the area of application, the cost will be £111.00 per 0.1 hectare, up to a maximum of £2775.00 for 2.5 hectares or above.

Any number of shafts or adits within this area are included within the area fee.

Number of boreholes

Where boreholes are planned for initial investigation purposes only, these will be charged at £55.50 per borehole.

Should treatment then prove necessary, then a further application would be required to cover the whole treatment area at £111.00 per 0.1 hectare, but the initial application fee will be deducted from this.

Mine entries to be investigated or treated

Shaft and adit investigation or treatment will be charged at £111.00 each, when not included within the above applications.

Further information about fees

For further information regarding fees in connection with applications for permission to enter or disturb coal mining interests, please contact: