The £12m redevelopment of Townlands Hospital in Henley, Oxfordshire will go ahead, despite a crisis over the building work procurement process.

At a public meeting last week, health chiefs gave assurances that it would go ahead, despite the project being put in doubt in May when it emerged that Oxfordshire Primary Care Trust had had to scrap its procurement plan. This followed legal advice that the procurement process was unclear and risked court action from unsuccessful bidders.

Oxfordshire Primary Care Trust chief executive Sonia Mills said: “The trust is absolutely committed to the development of Townlands Hospital.

“The nature of the procurement was to be open and see if there were other sites that could be developed and also enquire into doing parts of the scheme rather than all of it.

“We had more than 30 responses from bidders and throughout this stage we checked with our lawyers, first in August and then again in February.

“The procurement process then had to be stopped and restarted because of a change in legal advice. If we had ignored this advice then the results could have been very costly. There has been a big rise in the number of challenges to public sector procurement projects in the past few months.

“We have settled on the current site and going for a single procurement rather than a phased one and, rather than having different building companies building different parts, we are looking to have partners, or a consortium.”

Mills said the plans could be “subject to delays” but the trust hoped to have chosen a preferred bidder by May next year.

Wwork is expected to take two years, meaning the new hospital would open in 2013.

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