Work to build a new hospital in Wolverhampton could start by the end of the year, bosses have revealed.

Contractors are set to start clearing the centre of the New Cross site with the aim of opening a brand new hospital by 2012.

A planning application will be lodged with the city council in two months’ time, and the full business case put to West Midlands health chiefs and the Treasury later in the year.

Laboratories, the renal unit, the medical assessment unit and staff car parking will all be moved when work begins.

Clearance work is expected to take 18 months, and the first brick of the new hospital is set to be laid in 2009. The hospital, which was first mooted in 2000, is finally moving forward because the Royal Wolverhampton Hospitals NHS Trust (RWHT) has managed to bring its spiralling debt under control.

David Loughton, chief executive of RWHT, admitted that there would be disruption during the work but said it was vital for the future of the city for generations.

“It is going to be disruptive because we have got to build smack bang in the middle of a working hospital in order to get the long-term benefit,” said Mr Loughton.

The Heart and Lung Centre, Radiology PFI, the Beynon Centre, the Deanesly Centre, Wrekin House and T-Block, which houses the new eye infirmary, will all stay put.

Mr Loughton said the new hospital would be much more user friendly and compact – at the moment porters walk 14 miles a day getting around the massive site. “The fabric of the site is pretty awful ,and it does need improving,” said Mr Loughton.

“Why shouldn’t the people of Wolverhampton have a new hospital when the people of Birmingham and North Staffordshire have?”