Ambitious proposals for a new £380 million super-hospital in the West Midlands could get the go-ahead within a month.
Detailed plans for the 17-acre site on Grove Lane in Smethwick, which health bosses hope will provide patients in the area with the “best facilities in the country” are to be considered by Sandwell Council on June 25.
If the scheme gets the nod, hospital bosses have revealed today that work on compulsory purchase orders to buy up land on the site may begin as early as October.
Sandwell Council will look at the proposals at a meeting of the planning committee which is taking place on May 28 but is set to make a decision on the application, which has been put forward by Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust, at the following meeting on June 25. Councillor Bob Badham, Sandwell Council’s cabinet member for regeneration and transport, said: “Strategically, I am very much supporting the hospital going on this site but it has to go through the due planning process.”
The blueprint features a hospital with around 700 beds and a Bullring-style underground car park.
It would cater for 98,000 inpatients and 178,000 out-patient appointments each year. It would provide employment for around 4,000 people.
The plans also include a supporting education, research and administrative centre as well as a gym and creche.
It is hoped the hospital will be completed in 2015. The hospital’s location is on a brownfield site which will make it unique in the United Kingdom. It is mostly vacant.
One Comment
Why bring such large hospitals into the area? Small is better, better control, better management, and I would like to think better cleanliness!!! If it a place gets too large, then it is uncontrollable.