By Gillian Ellison

Last updated 11:22, Thursday, 09 October 2008

PUBLIC consultation will be carried out on the location of a new West Cumberland Hospital and health campus next spring, it has been revealed.

West cumberland Hospital

Sites to be considered have not been named but it is understood land near the current West Cumberland Hospital site and at Westlakes Science Park and Lillyhall could be among the options.

But one insider has cast serious doubts over Lillyhall’s suitability because it is “badly served by public transport and too remote from West Cumbria’s major towns to have a transformational economic effect”.

The source, who wished to remain anonymous, added: “It is feared that this would affect the elderly and the less well-off most of all and create an underprovision of hospital care between Distington and Millom.”

Land near the current hospital was one of the six possible options put forward by Copeland Council, which also included the Ginns site, in the town centre.

The timescale has moved back slightly – health bosses had originally hoped that a preferred site would be revealed by Christmas.

Copeland MP Jamie Reed said this week: “As the second largest employer in Copeland, our borough needs to retain the hospital – in the best interests of both the patients and the workforce.”

But he warned that “speed is of the essence” and that the £150million investment for the hospital “will not remain available indefinitely”.

“There are plenty of areas of the country which would happily use this investment tomorrow and the Department of Health and the Treasury cannot keep deferring investment in other parts of the country while we continue to demonstrate that we are unable to make a decision on a site.”

He said other issues which should be addressed by health bosses was that the whole Closer to Home plan is based on the provision of an acute district hospital in Whitehaven. “The provision of the step-up, step-down community beds in the new hospital underlines the fact.” And he added: “It is unconscionable that the community which hosts the world’s single largest inventory of radioactive materials would not also host a state-of-the-art acute district general hospital. We cannot afford to get this decision wrong as we will live with the consequences of it for decades to come.”

A public consultation on the options – which will include a preferred site – will run from the spring for the standard 12 weeks and be carried out by NHS Cumbria, the county’s primary care trust.

The North Cumbria University Hospitals Trust has waited until its new chief executive, Carole Heatly, settled in and she is taking a leading role.

She will head up a project board which will begin producing the business case and preferred site selection process. NHS Cumbria will also have input into the board.

Members will establish a system to assess the scope of the new development and will come up with the criteria to be used to determine the number and locations of sites to be considered.

Ms Heatly said: “I am delighted we are now in a position to move this exciting development forward for the people of West Cumbria.

“The project board will be overseeing the planning process for the new hospital and health campus and we look forward to working with our colleagues in NHS Cumbria and our stakeholders throughout the county.”

Sue Page, chief executive of NHS Cumbria, said: “This is a once-in-a- generation opportunity to create a new hospital and health campus for West Cumbria which will provide world-class healthcare.”