By Gillian Ellison

Published at 15:46, Wednesday, 03 February 2010

DETAILED designs and costings for the West Cumberland Hospital redevelopment will be submitted to regional health bosses next month.

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The new layout has been designed to ensure that it is better for patients and more efficient for staff.

On the ground level (Level 3) there will be the emergency floor which will include A&E, the GP out-of-hours service and critical care, as well as diagnostic departments in the centre for easy access.

Level 4 will include operating theatres, day surgery and inpatient wards, while services such as catering and stores will be housed on Level 2.

The layout of each department has this week been finalised and now the detail in individual rooms is being looked at.

Hospital bosses this week heard that the £100 million redeveloped hospital would have an ongoing cost of £6million a year.

Sue Halsall, head of strategic financial planning for North Cumbria University Hospitals Trust, said this would be paid for by finding efficiencies as well as a £2.3million reduction in capital charges as a result of the buildings that will be demolished.

“If we stay as we are, the costs of maintaining the existing building will continue to rise. A new building can counter that effect because it can be much more efficient,” she said. The redevelopment is said to represent about a £750,000 capital saving a year for the Trust for the next 60 years, compared to if it was left as it is currently.

Hospital project manager, David Hounslea, told the Trust board on Tuesday that the hospital would have all the services which were set out in Closer to Home and will have 220 beds, with the potential of increasing to 250 if required.

There will be 100 per cent single en suite rooms in the redevelopment, a new academic centre in the heart of the hospital and improved car parking.

A full planning application was submitted to Copeland Council last week at the same time bulldozers moved into a separate contractors’ compound between the hospital and Sneckyeat Road Industrial estate.

Trust board vice chairman, Michael Bonner, said: “Things are moving and people are quite surprised at what has been achieved in a short space of time.”

The full business case will go before the Trust board in March before then being submitted to the strategic health authority.

Published by http://www.whitehaven-news.co.uk