A MAJOR redevelopment of health facilities in north east Essex, including a primary care centre in Colchester and a new community hospital in Harwich are today a step closer.

A MAJOR redevelopment of health facilities in north east Essex, including a primary care centre in Colchester and a new community hospital in Harwich are today a step closer.

Provisional plans for the new centres have been released giving a glance of what the future holds for patients in the area.

The Mill Group had been chosen as the private sector partner for Colchester and Tendring primary care trusts (PCTs)work for a programme of work over the next 20 years.

In Colchester a new three-storey primary care centre will be built just south of the entrance to the old Tuner Village complex off Turner Road.

There will be a variety of services including dental, podiatry and a chronic disease management centre for care of chronic heart and lung disorders and there will be communal meeting rooms on the first floor.

Colchester PCT chief executive, Brendan Osborne, said: "It is now important to offer the Colchester public the opportunity to look at the plans and input into them.

"We can then go to planning safe in the knowledge that both these all important groups – staff and patients – have been fully involved in the environment in which they will work and be served for many years to come."

At the new Harwich Hospital, the primary care and community services will be on two levels of a building on Main Road in the south-west corner of the current site.

Ground floor clinical services will include a GP surgery, outpatients, rehabilitation and a minor injury unit.

The first floor will have an inpatients department, theatres, maternity, administration and communal facilities.

Tendring PCT chief executive, Paul Unsworth, said: "Throughout this development we will not only be enhancing the existing services already available to the hospital, but will be able to provide an extended range of services to the people of Harwich and the surrounding area."