Super hospital is given go-ahead

Despite objections from local residents to parts of the scheme, members of Blackburn with Darwen's planning committee last night backed the project, effectively an expansion of Queens Park Hospital site.

Work will begin in the summer and will be completed within three years.

Once it is built, Blackburn Royal Infirmary will close, which means that all hospital services for Blackburn will be on one site. Full planning permission was given to extend the hospital by building a four-storey complex.

It will include 311 in-patient beds, a combined children's unit, 11 operating theatres, a day case unit, accident and emergency, intensive care and high dependency unit, two additional radiology rooms and administration accommodation.

Objections were raised by people living near the hospital because of the effects a new hospital would have on traffic in the area. They argued that with a motorway junction nearby, new housing estates and an industrial estate, Haslingden Road was already regularly congested.

And people living in Fancy Row also face losing parking spaces in front of their homes because a cycle path will be built across what some homeowners have adopted as front gardens.

But Coun Dave Smith said: "While I understand their concerns, this is for the good of the borough at large."

The council's traffic expert, Ian Richardson, said £250,000 had been given by the NHS trust to fund extra bus services across the borough to the new site. A green transport plan was being introduced to encourage workers to use public transport or care share.

Jackie Hadwen, the project manager for the trust, said: "Work will begin in the summer and should be complete within three years.

"There will be a phased transfer of services from Blackburn Royal Infirmary but it will be done in such a way as not to disrupt patients. BRI will then be sold."

The infirmary building is not listed, so it could be demolished if developers bought the site.