The owners of London’s ExCel centre will cease charging the NHS to use the site for its new field hospital, following suggestions it was squeezing money from the health service during the coronavirus crisis.
The exhibition space was chosen to host the NHS Nightingale facility – the first of several temporary centres planned to treat Covid-10 patients.
The Sunday Times reported that ExCel’s owner, the Abu Dhabi National Exhibitions Company (ADNEC), was charging the health service between £2-3million in rent to use the east London site.
But just hours after the paper went to print, ExCel chief executive Jeremy Rees issued a statement insisting the centre had always been provided to the NHS “rent free”.
“We joined the national effort to combat coronavirus immediately and worked in close partnership with the NHS to ensure this hospital could be up and running in a matter of days,” he said.
However, he conceded that an initial agreement with the health service to house the temporary hospital "included a contribution to some fixed costs".
"We have since decided to cover the fixed costs ourselves,” he confirmed.
ADNEC’s managing director Humaid Matar Al Dhaheri, stressed that “profit has always been the furthest thing from our minds."
“It is our firm commitment that we will not charge a penny for the use of our facilities, and we will provide the NHS with the operational and logistical support it needs for NHS Nightingale London."
The hospital has capacity to hold 4,000 patients across 80 wards making it, at full capacity, one of the biggest hospitals in the world.
The Nightingale Hospital was built in nine days and was officially opened by Prince Charles on Friday.
