EAST Lancashire Hospice will close temporarily to allow work to begin on a new day therapy unit next month.

NHS Trust bosses have decided to close the Blackburn hospice and transfer patients and services to Rossendale General Hospital and Rossendale Hospice, from September 9.

The Park Lee building will be completely refurbished and almost twice as large when it re-opens next year.

Staff at first planned to carry on working from the Park Lee site during the year-long building works but have now decided it would be too disruptive.

Chief executive John Thomas, of the Blackburn, Hyndburn and Ribble Valley NHS Trust, said the Rossendale site would provide a more peaceful atmosphere.

A volunteer shuttle service on the Friendship bus, given by the NHS Trust's League of Friends, will be provided for staff and relatives with transport problems.

He said: "This is an important development which will provide much improved facilities and services for patients requiring palliative care."

Ten in-patients will be moved to a separate ward and day care patients will have their own therapy room at the Hospice.

East Lancs Hospice manager Lyn Stevenson said: "The hospice and hospital are very close together so we will be able to carry on working as a team. "The hospice is quite big, so we won't be cramped. Everyone there has been very good to us."

Generous local people have already raised almost £400,000 towards the £1.3million appeal to build the extension and the National Lottery has promised a £726,766 grant.

Total cost of the scheme is about £2million, including turning all in-patient wards into single rooms.

The extension will include a new chapel and facilities for counselling, rehabilitation and complementary medicine.

A new kitchen means patients' meals can be freshly prepared, instead of being transported from Blackburn Royal Infirmary.

Geoff Braithwaite, chairman of the East Lancashire Hospice trustees' committee, said: "In 12 months' time we will all be very proud of our new day therapy unit and refurbished in-patients hospice.

"This will enable us to offer a better quality of life to those less fortunate than ourselves."