HOSPITAL bosses are set to pay out £26.5m to overhaul its newest development - less than two years after it opened.

The Phase Five development at Burnley General Hospital was opened in 2006, and cost £30 million to build, but has been half-empty since acute surgery wards were moved to Blackburn in November's "Meeting Patients' Needs" shake-up.

Now the hospital has unveiled plans for its new children's and women's services department, which will cost a further £26.5 million.

Under plans agreed by the trust board today (WED), an extra building is to be added on to the development, along with new facilities for gynaecology, complicated births, and a new birthing centre, to open in 2010.

Facilities for kidney dialysis, radiology and dermatology, for which the lower two floors of the four-storey building were purpose-built, are to be moved out to make way for the new department.

The 132 beds in four acute surgery wards on the upper floors, which were closed in November, are set to re-open in the next 12 months for planned surgery.

East Lancashire Hospitals Trust is believed to be paying back more than £5 million per year, over the next 30 years, under the private finance initiative secured to build the original development. The new development will be paid for using capital funds.

Burnley council leader Gordon Birtwistle called the scheme "the management of the madhouse".

He said: "We are already paying out ridiculous amounts of money for wards that we desperately needed, but are now redundant.

"Now they are paying even more money to turn it into something it was never designed for."

Councillor Roy Davies, chairman of Blackburn's health scrutiny committee, added: "If they are trying to throw money away, they are going the right way about it.

"We already have state-of-the-art maternity facilities at Blackburn, which they will be closing. Burnley had a state-of-the-art acute care centre which they closed and sent over here.

"It doesn't make any sense whatsoever."

Chairman of the hospital's public and patient involvement forum, John Amos, said: "As we told them in the first place, things were not thought through as they should have been. The problem is that we have change upon change, so decisions are made one day, only for something else to come along and everything gets scrapped and rewritten again."

Hospitals chief executive Jo Cubbon said at the trust board meeting: "This new facility will be somewhere where babies and mothers will get excellent care in a unit that can attract and maintain excellent staff."

Trust chairman Alan Green added: "This will bring 21st century services to women's health into East Lancashire and tackle one of our biggest health inequalities priorities which is the high infant mortality rate in this area. This should be seen as a massive step forward."

Hospital estates director Chris Hodgson said: "The fundamental principle for this solution is that the wards in phase five are of a good standard and can be used with minimum alteration for obstetric and gynaecology inpatients."

Burnley MP Kitty Ussher said: "I welcome the commitment from these board papers that the specialist maternity unit will definitely be sited in Burnley.

"In fact I suspect that the need to get a return from the new Phase Five building that was already ready and waiting on the Burnley site has helped prevent maternity services - and planned operations - being moved to Blackburn.