New outpatient building for West Cornwall Hospital

The Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust has welcomed the news

A new outpatient department is to be built at West Cornwall Hospital, it has been confirmed.

The new department in Penzance will be open to patients by the end of March 2025, according to the Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust (RCHT).

It comes after the allocation of funding and an approval to proceed with the submission of the full business case from NHS England.

Kim O'Keeffe, deputy chief executive and chief nursing officer at RCHT, welcomed the news.

The project will be slightly smaller than planned because of inflation and other supply chain cost increases in the last two years, the RCHT said.

The trust is currently in discussion with Cornwall Council’s planning department about non-material changes to the previous planning application to allow the designs to be approved without delay.

Although plans for improvements to outpatient services at West Cornwall Hospital will not be affected, the transfer of services from Bellair Clinic, also in Penzance, will no longer be included in the scheme.

Any further design amendments at this stage could risk the project as a whole, given the very tight delivery time scales, the trust said.

'Much needed addition'

Ms O'Keeffe said the department was a "much-needed addition to the hospital’s estate".

She said: "The new Outpatient Department will be modern, spacious, accessible, and digitally enabled, thereby better enabling our dedicated staff to deliver outstanding care."

Ms O'Keeffe said the project would be ready by the end of March 2025.

Derek Thomas, MP for West Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, said the cash demonstrated the government’s "commitment to West Cornwall Hospital, and the commitment to deliver as much NHS treatment as close to where people live as possible”.