A new maternity ward at Hutt Hospital promised for years has been put in the back seat in the lead-up to building work to add neonatal cots swinging into action.

Instead of getting upgrades of both the ward and neonatal unit, the downsized project only includes the latter.

Yet it is costing is about a million dollars more than the original, bigger multi-part project agreed by the previous government in 2020.

Health Minister Simeon Brown is putting the blame there.

"They never did the work to make sure all of it could actually be delivered," he told RNZ this week.

Some work in stage one and two was done but then paused in 2022 over seismic worries with the main hospital block. By the time it was recosted it was three times more or $31 million.

'Off track'

"Off track," was how a Treasury report put it last year.

"Faced with that blowout, Health New Zealand recommended proceeding with stage 4, the neonatal unit, within the remaining funding," Brown's office said

"It required only an additional $950,000 to complete."

This meant dropping the maternity ward work, a rescope that Brown approved in January, another Treasury report showed.

The neonatal budget is $6.9m, part of what was a $9.5m - now $10.5m - women's health service redevelopment programme at Hutt Hospital. It relocated the community midwives and involved an upgrade to a unit that does assessments.

A tender was then put out only for neonatal, with an aim to start work in April, expanding it from 12 to 14 cots. Lack of cots has meant some premature babies having to transfer to Wellington Hospital.

The start was delayed and the $950,000 completion work began last week, when Brown visited.

'Insufficient planning'

Hutt South MP and Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop heralded the start online though a Facebook post of his did not mention maternity was not part of it.

Clinical leaders supported prioritising neonates, said Brown's office, adding staff were told in March that maternity was progessing separately.

Health NZ said it communicated the revised scope directly with staff and key stakeholders, including community midwives.

"Labour was quick to announce this project back in 2020, but like many of the projects this Government inherited, they never did the work to make sure all of it could actually be delivered," Brown said in a statement.

"Even the Ministry of Health has noted it 'illustrates the risks of insufficient planning at the time of approval.'"

Brown went to the hospital last week to view the construction underway, speak with staff, and, "importantly, seek assurances about the current maternity ward and discuss the next steps for its upgrade", his office told RNZ.

Health NZ was doing minor refurbishment work in the ward meantime.

"The maternity ward upgrade remains a priority," said Brown's office.

"The community can be assured they will continue to receive quality maternity care at Hutt Hospital."

Labour's health spokesperson Dr Ayesha Verrall said the government could not keep blaming the opposition for "its own failures and broken promises".

"This is another example of the Government's stop-start approach to hospital infrastructure - as we've seen in Dunedin and Nelson where plans for hospital upgrades and rebuilds have been made but the National Government has scaled them back, reduced services, and delayed projects by years," she said.

"This time, it's parents, babies and their families who are being let down by this Government."