Plans approved for new hospital in city

Plans to convert empty offices into a new hospital in Coventry have taken a major step forward.

The offices in Walsgrave Triangle Business Park can be converted into a medical centre, city council officials ruled on Monday.

The private hospital will be based at Ashford House on Eden Road, but around three-quarters of its work will be providing services for the NHS and will focus on eye and foot care.

The hospital will be open six days a week, able to see 40 patients a day, and hire 55 full-time staff, according to plans.

Doctors will see patients from 08:30 to 18:00, and the hospital will have 25 beds for patients who need to stay overnight.

The conversion to a hospital will also see huge parking changes at the site, with around three quarters of the car park at the side and back of the offices cordoned off or used as space for delivery vehicles and hospital storage.

The new hospital will be run by Mr Bal Manoj who manages a clinic providing both NHS and private treatment in Shrewsbury, according to scheme documents.

The medical centre will have to be inspected by the health regulator and granted a licence before it opens.

Coventry City Council originally turned plans for the hospital down last November over too much parking and not enough boosting of sustainable travel.

This time they said plans for the car park were an "appropriate use", but a travel plan would need to be approved before the hospital opens and rolled out soon afterwards.

A neighbour objected to the scheme, raising multiple concerns over where medical waste, gas storage and a paper shredder would be based. Officials said more details on the plans for these outside facilities at the hospital would have to be sent in and added a linkway between schools behind the office site was "acceptable".

They said safeguarding procedures are the school's responsibility and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) risk was not a planning matter. 

The local also claimed that access to the site was "already congested", and people who had previously used the offices complained about blocked entrances in the mornings and afternoons.

However, officers said the site can already be used as offices, and traffic problems at drop-off and pick-up times are created by the school, so they should be tackled by it. The hospital was still able to be used as offices under its new use.

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This news was gathered by the Local Democracy Reporting Service which covers councils and other public service organisations.