Musgrove Park Hospital to replace 'outdated' buildings

Designs for an £80m surgical centre include operating theatres, a critical care unit and an endoscopy suite

Work to replace "outdated" building is under way at Musgrove Park Hospital.

A new maternity building and surgical centre are part of the Somerset NHS Foundation Trust project.

The Department of Health and Social Care's hospital building programme is providing up to £450m for the work.

The hospital in Taunton was built during the Second World War and the oldest parts of the building house services such as the critical care unit.

Somerset NHS Foundation Trust runs the hospital in Taunton

Dr Matthew Hayman, the trust's deputy chief medical officer, said the facilities were in need of modernisation.

"I am very proud of the quality of care that my colleagues provide but some of these hospital services are housed in facilities that were built in the 1940s and are simply not good enough," he said.

"We are very excited by the improvements we can make to the care we provide and to our patients' experience by planning and building modern, state-of-the-art facilities."

The next steps of the plan include a new maternity and children's building and the development of cancer and emergency services.

Work is already being done on a new surgical centre, acute assessment hub and a therapies department.

Modern facilities will replace the hospital's older buildings which date back to the 1940s

David Shannon, Somerset NHS Foundation Trust's director of strategic development, said: "We already have plans to replace parts of the 1940s buildings with modern facilities.

"This additional funding will give us the opportunity to look at our remaining outdated estate."

Taunton Deane MP Rebecca Pow said she was "delighted" that work was under way.

Musgrove Park was built as a temporary casualty evacuation hospital for the D-Day landings and other buildings were added later in the 1940s.