Milestone reached on Royal Oldham Hospital's £28m expansion

The Northern Care Alliance NHS Group and its partners are celebrating a major milestone in its plans to provide the Royal Oldham Hospital with a £28million extension.

Oldham Council’s Planning Committee has approved the building of a four-storey extension on the hospital site, with no objections.

Council Committee members complimented the design and plans in place for the Royal Oldham site and voted unanimously in favour of the application, with a final decision around Government funding and timescales expected from the Treasury in due course.

The new-build plans show how the extension would incorporate two new 24 bedded general surgery wards as well as a brand new emergency theatre, within the current theatres unit with supporting accommodation, enhanced recovery area and central storage, allowing the Royal Oldham Hospital to operate as the specialist hub site for high risk and emergency general and colorectal surgery, for the north east of Greater Manchester. 

The new facility will sit adjacent to the main hospital building, on the site of K Block, which will be demolished as part of the works.

The building will provide accommodation over four floors.

Public consultation on the new build took place in November 2019, and a main contractor for the capital works, IHP, has been selected.

Once started, it is anticipated that the programme of works will take 20-24 months to complete.

Nicola Firth, Director of Nursing and Chief Officer at the Royal Oldham Hospital, thanked the staff, patients, public and other colleagues across Oldham and Greater Manchester for their support in getting the plans to this stage.

She said: “If our business case for the investment is approved by Government, the new surgical hub will provide much needed medical expertise to the people of the north east of Greater Manchester.

"It will also enable further developments at the Royal Oldham, which will advance our ambitions to provide care and employment to the people of Oldham and beyond.”

Mike Barker, Chief Operating Officer at NHS Oldham CCG, said: “I am pleased to see the plans for the expansion of the Royal Oldham Hospital have been approved so far, it will be great to see such investment in the area.

"This expansion will not only bring in specialist medical knowledge and care to the local area but there will be a variety of employment opportunities for the people of Oldham and wider communities.

“The fact that the new specialist hub will be based in Oldham, but will be providing high risk and emergency general and colorectal surgery for patients across the whole of the north east of Greater Manchester, is something to be really proud of.”

The Royal Oldham development is one of two exciting schemes that the Northern Care Alliance NHS Group has received planning permission for.

At the Group’s Salford Royal site, construction work is due to start soon on the six-storey Acute Receiving Centre. 

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