Huge plans to build a new children’s heart unit at Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary could be approved next week.
The £40m development would see the Freeman Hospitals’ renowned specialist children’s heart services move to a “striking” new home in the city centre. A major government cash injection to fund the state of the art facility at the RVI secured the future of child heart surgery in the North East in 2019, after NHS England had said services could only continue in the region if they were relocated from the Freeman to the same site as the RVI’s Great North Children's Hospital.
Designs for the new centre were unveiled earlier this year and would see the three-storey unit built on a section of the existing RVI car park in Queen Victoria Road, connected to the rest of the hospital via an enclosed footbridge. The proposals now look set to be given the go-ahead by city councillors next Friday, with the new building described as a “highly prized addition to the existing children’s hospital that would benefit the whole of the North East”.
