Revealed: Floods have forced at least 67 closures at NHS hospitals since 2021
A recent investigation revealed that at least 67 NHS hospital sites in the UK have faced temporary closures due to flooding since 2021. The closures have affected various departments, including maternity units and surgical theatres, with some incidents lasting for weeks or months. As climate change contributes to wetter winters and increased rainfall, the risk of flooding to healthcare infrastructure is expected to rise significantly in the coming years.
- ▪At least 67 NHS hospital wards and departments have been forced to close due to flooding since 2021.
- ▪The number of flood incidents at NHS facilities in England has doubled since 2021, reaching nearly 400 in 2024-25.
- ▪Flooding poses a significant threat to the UK's healthcare infrastructure, exacerbating existing issues within the NHS.
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| Original publisher | Carbon Brief |
| Canonical URL | https://www.carbonbrief.org/revealed-floods-have-forced-at-least-67-closures-at-nhs-hospitals-since-2021/ |
| Publication time | Mon, 25 May 2026 15:00:00 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-25T15:07:38.108Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-25T15:07:38.108Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | tSS9M7IJxsx0 |
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| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
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| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
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Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
At least 67 NHS hospital wards, departments and other sites across the UK have been forced to temporarily close or relocate due to weather-related flooding over the past five years, a Carbon Brief investigation reveals. Maternity centres, surgical theatres, a neonatal intensive-care unit and even entire hospital buildings have been disrupted by heavy rainfall or encroaching floodwaters. Carbon Brief submitted freedom-of-information (FOI) requests to 162 NHS trusts, which show that while many flood-related shutdowns were brief, some lasted for weeks or months. In total, 148 trusts responded to these requests with reports of 67 flood-related shutdowns, giving detailed data for 30 incidents that resulted in a total of 3,000 days of closures.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Carbon Brief.
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