Planning approval granted for life-changing Mansfield diagnostics health centre

The new community diagnostics centre will be built on the site of the former Victoria Hospital – which faces demolition – next to Mansfield Community Hospital, Stockwell Gate.

The major hub comes as part of wider NHS plans to hasten diagnostics and improve outcomes for millions of people nationwide.

NHS papers say the site will be a “one-stop-shop” for numerous tests, including CT scans, MRI scans, endoscopies, ultrasounds and X-rays, with patients able to get quick answers to their health concerns.

NHS bosses say the centre will help to reduce waiting times for thousands of patients and could conduct as many as 97,000 tests and scans a year.

The plans by Nottinghamshire NHS leaders and Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs the community hospital, were first revealed by your Chad in January.

Now members of Mansfield Council’s planning committee have backed the sceheme.

In their latest meeting, councillors heard the facility will be life-changing to thousands of people across Mansfield, Ashfield and Newark & Sherwood.

A planning officer told the committee: “It will effectively streamline cancer care while potentially providing a one-stop-shop.

“You can come in, be diagnosed in one place with one appointment, rather than having several different appointments spread throughout a period of time.

“It’s part of a wider project across the whole of Nottinghamshire. This facility would serve Mansfield and surrounding districts.”

NHS bosses expect the facility to welcome its first patient by autumn 2024.

The authority’s planning committee unanimously backed the plans.

David Ainsworth, SFH director for strategy and partnerships, told a Nottinghamshire Council health scrutiny committee in March: “We’re waiting for approval of some additional funds to go live in December this year.

“If that comes good, we’ve got a plan in place to start some of the work already and we’d look to move an MRI scanner onto the Community Hospital site.

“We’d probably do some ultrasounds and blood tests and we think that could give us an additional 500 tests from that site from December this year.

“This starts to lead into the planning that, by 2024/25, we’d have an additional 97,000 tests just from this new site.”