EMERGENCY patients could soon be arriving directly at hospital in Blackburn by helicopter.

Health chiefs want to install a helipad outside the new emergency unit at Queen's Park Hospital.

At the moment, accident and emergency patients have to fly to Park Lee Road four streets away from A&E at Blackburn Royal Infirmary.

All departments at the infirmary move to a massive £113million extension at Queen's Park in July.

Councillors will decide whether to approve the 22-metre helipad on Thursday.

It will allow the North West Air Ambulance to get patients to A&E, transfer patients out of the hospital to specialist hospitals and to transport organs.

Chief executive of East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust, Jo Cubbon, said: "The opportunity to have a helipad for critically-ill patients right into A&E is one we have to grasp with both hands. In this kind of situation every minute counts for patients.

"This means emergency patients who are transported by air ambulance can reach the new accident and emergency department in the quickest possible time.

"I'm confident that the planning authorities will recognise the importance of this proposal."

She said the hospital expected about three landings a week.

Five residents had opposed the plan. But Haslingden Road resident Ethel Hayes, 76, said her concerns about possible damage to her property had been answered and she now backed the scheme.

Jean Whalley, who also objected, said: "I don't have a problem with it because I don't think it will affect us all that much."