by Staff Reporter

Last updated 12:59, Friday, 10 October 2008

A public consultation into where west Cumbria’s new hospital and health campus should be built will now not start until the spring.

Health bosses had originally hoped that a preferred site would be revealed by Christmas, but the time scale has been pushed back.

However Copeland MP Jamie Reed this week warned that they must act fast to ensure £150 million of funding which has been earmarked for the project is not lost.

The sites to be considered have not been named but it is understood that land near to the current West Cumberland Hospital site, Westlakes Science Park and Lillyhall could be among the options.

However the issue has the potential to cause a turf war between Allerdale and Copeland councils, as both fight to have it built in their patch.

Concerns have already been raised about Lillyhall, with objectors saying it is badly served by public transport and too remote for any of the area’s main towns to feel any knock-on economic benefits.

In the past it has been argued that the hospital should be close to Sellafield, yet others say that it should be on the Allerdale side of its current site to make it accessible to residents in both boroughs.

Health bosses agreed two years ago to push forward with plans for a new acute hospital in west Cumbria.

It will replace the West Cumberland Hospital, at Hensingham, which has been deemed too big and no longer in a fit state to meet the needs of modern day healthcare.

Initially there was talk of a new hospital being built on the same site, but the logistics of running a hospital service on a building site make this option virtually impossible.

However, land near to the current hospital is one of the six possible options that have been put forward for consideration by Copeland Council. Others include the Ginns site in the town centre.

Copeland MP Jamie Reed said that “speed is of the essence” when agreeing the location.

“There are plenty of areas of the country which would happily use this investment tomorrow and the Department of Health and the Treasury cannot keep deferring investment in other parts of the country whilst we continue to demonstrate that we are unable to make a decision on a site,” he explained.

His view is that, as the borough’s second largest employer, the hospital must remain in Copeland – in the interests of patients and the workforce.

“It is unconscionable that the community which hosts the world’s single largest inventory of radioactive materials would not also host a state-of-the-art acute district general hospital.

“We cannot afford to get this decision wrong as we will live with the consequences of it for decades to come,” he added.

The public consultation on all of the options – including a preferred site – will run from the spring for the standard 12 weeks and be carried out by NHS Cumbria, the county’s primary care trust.

The North Cumbria University Hospitals Trust has waited until its new chief executive, Carole Heatly, settled in before pressing ahead as she is taking the leading role.

She will head a project board which will come up with the criteria used to determine the number and locations of sites to be considered.

Ms Heatly said: “I am delighted that we are now in a position to move this exciting development forward for the people of west Cumbria.”