New £10m Blackburn health centre vision

9:09am Wednesday 23rd July 2008

Comments (1)   Have your say »

BLACKBURN’S new £10million health centre is set to include a new walk-in centre and a sex health clinic for young people.

And the new building off Barbara Castle Way will also feature facilities for diagnostic scans and minor operations.

The very first plans for the centre, which will replace the dilapidated Montague Centre, were revealed to Blackburn with Darwen Primary Care Trust Board this week.

Initial ideas by architect Justin Harris, of Nightingale Associates, show a trian-gular six-storey building, enclosing an internal garden and courtyard.

Facilities planned include new walk-in centres for emergency treatment of minor illness and injury, a young people’s centre for advice on sexual health and facilities for drugs services and counselling.

The centre will include up to four GP practices, as well as facilities for X-rays and scans, minor operations, dental surgeries, podiatry and physiotherapy.

The ideas have been put together from initial analy-sis of a six-month consu-ltation of staff and patients on their requirements for the new centre, and still have to be approved by planning officials and senior NHS staff.

Fears over car parking availability also need to be addressed.

Trust chief executive Judith Griffin said: “This will be a fantastic develop-ment for the people of Blackburn and Darwen.

“It will have more GPs, completely new services like the walk-in centre and the young people’s centre, and it will be open at evenings and weekends. It’s very exciting.”

Plans have not yet been released to the public, as they could still undergo big change to accommodate the borough’s planning rules and requirements of NHS North West, the strategic health authority which will receive the PCT’s business case for the centre.

It is hoped that final details can be settled quickly and smoothly, ready to begin work in March next year, and for the building to be finished and opened by the end of 2010.

Trust chairman Nick Kennedy said: “This is a good thing to do and we should get on with it.”