New Preston hospital will be in South Ribble, says MP

The new hospital site is expected to be built in South Ribble rather than Preston

The new Royal Preston Hospital will be built in South Ribble to the south of the city, the borough's MP has said.

Katherine Fletcher revealed a number of sites had been shortlisted within the South Ribble Borough Council area.

The Conservative MP said the replacement hospital would be "really brilliant news" for everybody living in central Lancashire.

Work has been under way to find a new site within a 10-mile radius of the existing site in Fulwood.

The government has backed a Lancashire and South Cumbria Integrated Care Board bid to construct two entirely new hospitals to replace both the Royal Preston and Royal Lancaster Infirmary, the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) said.

Ms Fletcher told the LDRS that the new location for the Royal Preston would be "genuinely better" for the city's people.

She said "putting a brand new, net-zero, state-of-the-art hospital with appropriate transport links" meant it "would probably be easier" for people "to get to than a bottlenecked Preston site".

The new Royal Preston Hospital will be located to the south of Preston

However Preston City Council's leader Matthew Brown said he wanted the new hospital to be built within the city as it has "higher levels of ill health" than surrounding areas.

The council leader said the city had "quite a large, diverse population" and "there are many in our minority communities who suffer disproportionately in terms of their health".

He added that the Preston population was "less well off" than Chorley and South Ribble and "we need to look at the social determinants of ill health".