Healthcare investor will buy 14 private hospitals in £500m deal

The healthcare property investor and developer Assura has struck a £500m deal to buy 14 private hospitals from Canada's Northwest Healthcare Properties, including the Cancer Centre London and the Edgbaston hospital in Birmingham.

- Julia Kollewe

The deal comes at a time when the NHS is under massive pressure, with near-record waiting lists, and more people are going private, either paying for treatment themselves or taking out health insurance. To clear the backlog, the NHS has been outsourcing more procedures, including cataract surgery, to private clinics.

The 14 hospitals are spread throughout the UK, and are let on long leases to a number of private healthcare providers. They include six Nuffield hospitals including Woking, Edinburgh, Highgate and the Cancer Centre London; five Circle hospitals including Huddersfield, Lancaster and Lincoln; two Spire hospitals, Cheshire and Claremont; and the Edgbaston hospital in Birmingham run by Practice Plus Group, which is closed but due to reopen in September after renovation.