New £41m children's heart unit for Newcastle's Royal Victoria Infirmary

The trust said it wanted care for children to be in one place to cut travel between the Freeman Hospital and RVI

A new children's heart unit is to be built at a Tyneside hospital in a bid to cut travelling time for patients.

In 2019 the government agreed £41.7m for the unit at Newcastle's Royal Victoria Infirmary (RVI).

Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said it wanted care to be on one site so patients did not need to travel between the Freeman Hospital and RVI.

Building work on the unit will begin in 2023 and could be fully operational by 2030/31.

The three-storey centre will be built on a section of the RVI's outdoor car park on Queen Victoria Road and will be connected to the rest of the hospital via a footbridge.

"This state-of-the-art building will become home to children's heart services, including transplants, and will bring together all of the trust's paediatric specialties on one site for the first time," a spokesman said.

"This will mean that young patients and their families do not have to travel between the Freeman and RVI for different care and treatment."

He added the centre was part of a 10-year investment programme that will also include a new day treatment centre at the Freeman Hospital.

A footbridge will connect the centre with the rest of the hospital

The plan also includes a new specialist hospital building, also on the RVI site, which will become home to many adult health services.

Deputy leader of Newcastle City Council, Karen Kilgour, said: "Newcastle is blessed with excellent hospitals and this heart centre will be a welcome addition, offering world-class facilities.

"It will give children and their families the very best care and clinical excellence, allowing parents to stay with their children overnight and provide a therapy garden to aid children's recovery.

"The centre will be built to the highest environmental standards, contributing to our ambition to be a carbon net zero city by 2030."

Analysis

Sharon Barbour, Health Correspondent, BBC Look North

It's the latest chapter in a long and at times a very emotional story that began more than 20 years ago with calls to change the way child heart surgery units operated in England.

In the future there would be fewer and they would be safer, it was claimed.

What followed was years of debate and reviews.

Newcastle's Freeman Hospital had developed a world-renowned service, where surgeons completed the UK's first heart transplant on a baby, and it's one of only two hospitals in the UK to do the procedure.

So, its future was safe...wasn't it?

No. It was at risk because Newcastle's Great North Children's Hospital was across the city at the RVI.

The NHS was adamant, to keep child heart surgery in the North East they had to be on the same site.

Plans were drawn up to build a new heart unit at the RVI, and in 2019 the government agreed funding of £41.7m.

But since then there has been a pandemic, high inflation, and a major financial crisis. Today the government is looking closely at what it can afford.

So while the hospital trust and many families are delighted about the green light to build the new heart surgery centre, there is an air of anxiety over funding.

And that could put a question mark over the future of child heart surgery in the North East once more.