On 11 January 1998, Prime Minister Tony Blair announced the go-ahead for the construction of a £214 million, 809 bed, new hospital in a broadcast from Tokyo on the BBC's Breakfast with Frost show.

In July 2000 approval was given to extend the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital with a second phase that included an additional 144 beds and took the project cost to £229 million.

[4] The Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust pays the private PFI Octagon consortium in the region of £41 million a year.

The Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital was also highly commended in the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment Prime Minister's Better Public Building Award in 2002.

[6] It is one of a small number of Accident and Emergency departments to benefit from Pearson Lloyd's redesign - 'A Better A&E' - which reduced aggression against hospital staff by 50 per cent.

[8] The controversial Private Finance Initiative was first introduced to the public sector under the Conservative government of John Major and the contract for NNUH, one of the first PFI hospitals, was signed in 1996.

In 2006 Edward Leigh, Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) and chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, appropriated a famous Edward Heath quote (originally used with reference to Tiny Rowland of Lonrho International[9]) to describe the Department of Health's approach to a refinancing deal for the NNUH PFI: "It is hard to escape the conclusion that the public sector staff managing the project were not up to the rough and tumble of negotiating refinancing proposals with the private sector ...

Ambulances were forced to queue outside the building while non-urgent patients were discharged to free up beds and a major incident emergency plan implemented.

Dr Julia Patterson, a spokeswoman for EveryDoctor, which campaigns to improve doctors' working conditions, said the trust's message meant "optimal care is unavailable now for some NHS patients [because] 'the least unsafe option' is the best we can offer.