Major plans to rebuild hospitals in Nottingham and Leicester delayed
Four hospitals across the East Midlands had been included in a Conservative Government pledge for new hospitals by 2030
Building the 40 new hospitals promised by the previous government will take at least a decade longer than planned, the Health Secretary has said.
Wes Streeting accused the Conservatives of failing to fund their government's 2019 promise of providing the new facilities by 2030, saying the pledge had been "built on the shaky foundation of false hope".
Setting out a new timetable, Mr Streeting said construction of the new hospitals would proceed in four "waves", with the final part not beginning until between 2035 and 2039.
The first wave is already under construction, and set to be completed in the next three years.
These include four hospitals in Dorset, the Cedar Programme in the North East, the Oriel Eye Hospital in London and the National Rehabilitation Centre near Loughborough.
Also part of wave one are the seven hospitals affected by re-inforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac), among them King's Lynn's Queen Elizabeth Hospital, the James Paget in Great Yarmouth, and the West Suffolk Hospital in Bury St Edmunds.
Construction work on these will begin between 2027 and 2029.
Wave two schemes will now begin main construction between 2030 and 2035. They include Leicester General Hospital Royal Infirmary.
Third and fourth waves of nine hospitals each will begin during the 2030s, with construction of the Royal Preston, Nottingham City, Royal Berkshire, Hampshire and Eastbourne District General hospitals set to start between 2037 and 2039.
"Honest, funded and can actually be delivered"
Mr Streeting said the new timetable was "honest, funded and can actually be delivered".
He added: "It is a serious, credible plan to build the hospitals our NHS needs."
Promising that all the new units would be delivered, Mr Streeting said he had secured investment averaging £3 billion a year, which he described as part of the largest capital investment in the NHS since the previous Labour government.
He also announced a new framework for contracting out construction of the new hospitals, saying this would ensure the new facilities were delivered "as quickly as possible".
Documents released by the Department for Health and Social Care suggested the programme would not reach the £3 billion per year figure until it had reached a "steady state" in the early 2030s, with the "pre-construction phase" requiring less spending.
The announcement follows a review of the Conservatives' £20 billion New Hospitals Programme, which Mr Streeting launched shortly after taking office in July, claiming the previous government's plans were undeliverable and had not been properly funded.
But shadow health secretary Edward Argar said Mr Streeting had put progress made under the previous government "at risk" by "kicking the can down the road".
He said: "Today's announcement will come as a bitter blow to trusts, staff and crucially patients who believed the party opposite and will now be left waiting even longer for vital investment.
"Yet again, before the election, they talked the talk, but it's patients who lose out when this Government fails to deliver."
Saffron Cordery, interim chief executive of NHS Providers, said: "Trusts who are part of the New Hospital Programme account for more than 40% (£5.7 billion) of the total bill for backlog repairs and maintenance.
"Today's announcement will make a difficult situation even more challenging."