Part Of Portsmouth Hospital To Be Demolished

24 January 2011, 09:28 | Updated: 30 March 2016, 13:50

One of the best-known buildings on a Portsmouth hospital site is set to close its doors -as demolition experts prepare to move in.

Hoardings are being put up around the Out-Patients Department building at St Mary's, off Milton Road.

When the old Out-Patients' Department (OPD) is vacated, the remaining hoarding will be put up across the front of the building. The work will mean the temporary loss of some parking spaces on the site.

The new OPD is due to open today (Monday 24th January). It will form part of a new £18m community health campus which is being developed on part of the St Mary's site by NHS Portsmouth, the city's primary care trust. The Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust owns the rest of the land.

The demolition of the OPD is due to start in early March and is scheduled to be completed in May.

The land will be cleared and used to provide new car parking. It will also be part of the main entrance to to the health campus, which is due to be fully operational in 2012.

Other key features of the campus will include the Portsmouth Maternity Centre, a GP-led intermediate care ward, podiatry, blood tests (phlebotomy), chronic disease management, blood services,  contraception and sexual health services, physiotherapy and occupational therapy.

*From today (Monday 24th January), there will no longer be walk-in appointments to phlebotomy services at St Mary's. A
dedicated telephone line - 023 9268 0275 - was set up by NHS Portsmouth from 10 January for patients wanting blood tests to make appointments by phone instead. The move aims to improve services to the public and avoid big queues of
people waiting for tests, particularly early on Monday mornings.