THE A&E department at Worcestershire Royal Hospital is to be expanded by about 50 per cent as part of a £4.9 million project, your Worcester News can exclusively reveal.

Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust is developing plans to expand the size of the department using modular units while also creating a new discharge lounge and up to 150 new car parking spaces.

Speaking exclusively to your Worcester News, the trust’s chairman Harry Turner said the plans would improve the experience of patients visiting hospital while avoiding a repeat of last winter’s tumultuous conditions.

Mr Turner said the A&E department was built to cope with 45,000 patients a year, but is now getting about 75,000 on an annual basis and action needed to be taken urgently.

“We did have a bad winter – we put our hands up and admit that,” he said.

“But we’ve changed a lot and now we are investing to improve patient experience.”

The A&E expansion will be constructed in the area between the current department and the newly-opened Worcestershire Oncology Centre, while the new discharge lounge will be built at the other end of the hospital.

Mr Turner said the lounge would help free up beds once patients no longer needed treatment, which has been a perennial problem for the trust.

The organisation is also taking action to create more parking at the hospital, which is often at a premium. Rows of drivers circling the two main car parks in the hope of finding a space are a common sight.

Some of the new spaces will be created next to the oncology centre while the helipad on the south east of the site will also be raised onto a platform, creating space for parking underneath it.

Mr Turner said the trust had submitted a bid to the Department of Health for the £4.95 million the project had been predicted to cost and planning applications for the three projects were going in imminently.

“We’ve got a very compelling case,” he said. “We expected to hear back from the Department of Health by early autumn. And we anticipate getting this completed before Christmas.”

But he added the plans were not connected to the long-running project revamping hospital care in the county, which some have said would lead to the closure of the A&E department at the Alex.

“This is about what’s happening right now,” he said.

“This is part of a packet of measures to improve patients experience over the winter.

“It’s really important that people know this nothing to do with the Alex.”

Worcester MP Robin Walker said he was fully in favour of the plans and had already written to health secretary Jeremy Hunt asking him to support the plans and was hoping to meet with him next week to discuss the scheme in detail.

“It’s been clear for a while we need extra capacity at the Royal,” he said. “I’m pleased this is being progressed as matter of urgency.

“This is a good stop gap measure while we look for a more long term solution.”

He added he was particularly pleased problems with car parking at the hospital were being dealt with.

“Every meeting I’ve had with the hospital for the last five years I’ve been talking about the car parking,” he said. “I’d still like them to look at the potential to build a multi-storey car park and they need to look at the cost of parking as well.”