Dorset County Hospital currently needs more than £11 million to get through its repairs backlog.

The figure comes as the amount needed for hospital repairs across the country reached a record high of £11.6 billion - £1 billion more than this time last year.

Campaigners are calling for the government to provide urgent investment to ensure they are safe and can function effectively. 

The total cost of repairs needed at Dorset County Hospital is £11,119,808 which was confirmed by DCH and is publicly available from NHS Digital’s Estates Return Information Collection (ERIC).

Also known as 'backlog maintenance' it refers to the measure of how much would need to be invested to restore a building to a certain state based on a state of assessed risk criteria.

It does not include planned maintenance work, meaning it is work that should already have taken place.

Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate for West Dorset, Edward Morello, said: "Years of under-investment by successive Conservative governments has left our hospitals in a perilous state.

“The backlog of repairs is putting both patients and staff at risk, and is completely unacceptable.

"Residents of west Dorset deserve to know that they can go and get the treatment they need in a safe environment.

"The Conservative party has shown they cannot be trusted with our NHS.”

A spokesperson for Dorset County Hospital said: “We have an ongoing estates maintenance programme in place and prioritise work that needs to be completed with the funds we have available to keep our hospital environments as safe and effective as possible.”

This news comes after a report from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) found that improvements are needed in the maternity services at DCH.

The inspection, carried out on the unit in Dorchester, saw its rating downgraded from ‘good’ to ‘requires improvement’.

As well as the overall rating for maternity services declining, the rating from how well-led the service is has been lowered from ‘good’ to ‘inadequate’.

The safety of the service also requires improvement, whilst the service’s effectiveness, caring and responsiveness wasn’t rated during the inspection.

As a result of the change in ratings to the maternity service, the overall rating for Dorset County Hospital at a location level has declined from ‘good’ to ‘requires improvement’.