All quotes attributable to Sonia Mills, Chief Executive, North Bristol NHS Trust
At a special meeting held last night, Bristol City Council granted planning permission for the new state-of-the-art super-hospital at Southmead.
This is excellent news and a decision we have been looking forward to for a long time. The new hospital for Bristol and the surrounding area is a step closer.
The next stage is for the scheme’s Appointment Business Case to be signed off by the Department of Health and we expect that to be done imminently.
We remain on schedule for the overall contract to be signed in the New Year in 2010, after which work can start on building the main body of the hospital.
Much work is being undertaken on the Southmead site in order to clear the area where the new hospital will be built, including construction of the new state-of-the-art Pathology Sciences and Learning & Research buildings. Staff are due to move in at the end of this year and will really benefit from these fantastic, high quality purpose-built facilities.
Our new Data Centre, which brings together many of our IT services under one roof, is already up and running.
In addition, other works to clear areas within the development site have been ongoing for the past few weeks.
The old chapel building has now gone and the facilities have been relocated in temporary accommodation.
In addition, there have been small changes to car parking provision and, earlier this week, the temporary modular buildings to house the catering department started to arrive on site.
For more information and artist impressions of the new hospital, log onto superhospitalforbristol.nhs.uk/