Established in 1998 from the merger of Ashford and St Peter’s Hospitals, the trust has been on a long journey of development and improvement to its current position as the largest provider of acute hospital services to Surrey residents. It became a Foundation Trust in December 2010.
Ashford and St Peter’s Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (ASPH) serves a population of more than 410,000 people living in the boroughs of Runnymede, Spelthorne, Woking and parts of Elmbridge, Hounslow, Surrey Heath and beyond. The Trust employs around 4,800 individual members of staff. Our turnover was £475 million in 2024/25.
The Trust provides a whole range of services across its hospital sites. The majority of planned care, like day case and orthopaedic surgery and rehabilitation services, is provided at Ashford Hospital, with more complex medical and surgical care and emergency services at St Peter’s Hospital. For a quick overview, we have a summary of services.
You can read more about the history of both hospitals.
In 2024, a decision was made by board members of Ashford and St Peter’s Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Trust to establish a group model. This was then followed by the appointment of Louise Stead as Group Chief Executive in January 2025, overseeing both trusts.
The formation of this group model brings together two high-performing organisations with shared geography, overlapping populations, and complementary expertise.
While both organisations remain independent - with their own executive teams, boards, and councils of governors - this model allows us to work more closely to deliver better care, create new opportunities for our people, and respond to the challenges facing the NHS with greater scale and pace.
Our group model is about clinically-led collaboration that improves consistency, accelerates improvement, and supports innovation across both trusts - while maintaining strong local leadership and accountability.
From 1 April 2026, a new organisation - NHS Surrey and Sussex - will be responsible for buying and planning health and care services across the two counties.
Created through the merger of NHS Surrey Heartlands and NHS Sussex, the new Integrated Care Board (ICB) will be responsible for setting a clear strategy for improving the health of the local population across Surrey and Sussex. This includes making sure how health and care funding is spent locally has a direct impact on improving people’s health and reducing the inequalities we know exist in how some people access and receive care.
The new ICB geography also incorporates the Surrey Heath, Farnham and Ash areas of Surrey which were previously part of the Frimley health and care system, meaning health is now coterminous with local authority boundaries.
You can find out more on the Surrey and Sussex ICB website.
Surrey Heartlands Trust Provider Collaborative (TPC) is a partnership of acute trusts committed to improving patient outcomes in ways which are fair, sustainable, efficient and innovative.
Established in July 2023, the TPC consists of four acute hospital and mental health organisations:
We recognise that by working together we are better able to meet the challenges of increasing demand for services, reducing health inequalities, the pressures on our workforce, and financial sustainability, so that the communities we collectively serve receive the quality of services that they rightly expect, in a timely way. We work together across a number of key work streams, such as elective care, maternity, acute paediatrics, endoscopy, mental health and systematic anti-cancer therapy.
Find out more about the Surrey Heartlands TPC.
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