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Lancashire County Council says it is willing to consider making changes to a major industrial, retail and leisure development in order to accommodate plans for a new Royal Preston Hospital.
The plot – off Stanifield Lane and south of Stoney Lane – is part of a wider area known as the Cuerden Strategic Regional Investment Site, the majority of which is earmarked for the county council’s ‘Lancashire Central’ project.
That scheme will see the authority develop a vast array of industrial, storage and office space – along with retail units, food and drink outlets, a drive-through restaurant, car showrooms, a leisure centre, gym, health facility, creche and 116 new homes.
The blueprint was granted planning permission exactly 12 months ago and ended the longstanding uncertainty surrounding the location – close to the junction of the M6 and M65 – after a previous plan for a retail development centred around a new IKEA store collapsed when the company pulled the plug on its involvement in 2018.
County Hall owns 71 percent of the overall 65-hectare Cuerden site – between Stanifield Lane and Wigan Road – with the remainder known to have been under the control of Manchester-based property firm Brookhouse Group Limited as of last year.
Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) analysis of maps provided both as part of the planning application for the Lancashire Central development and produced by the NHS, to show the proposed location of the hospital, indicates that the health facility will wholly occupy the Brookhouse land – although neither the company nor the NHS has confirmed any sale agreement between the two.
However, the comparison also suggests that the relocated Royal Preston will encroach onto a significant part of the county council’s portion of the Cuerden site – and the authority has told the LDRS it will seek to “assist” the hospital plans.
The Lancashire Central development has provisionally been split into five zones – and the hospital appears to take up one of them, the second largest, almost in its entirety. Zone D had previously been identified for the leisure centre and some 30 percent of the general industrial, storage, distribution and office facilities to be created on the site.
Apart from the leisure facility, all of the other uses in that tranche of the development are also present elsewhere within the Cuerden plot – meaning they would still form part of the plans even if the hospital lessened their extent.
However, it is not known whether the leisure facility would or could be accommodated in another of the zones. If it were to be shifted to another part of the site, that would result in further changes to the composition of Lancashire Central.
In a statement to the LDRS referring to the proposed locations for both the new Royal Preston and a replacement for the Royal Lancaster Infirmary, Lancashire County Council leader Phillippa Williamson said: “These new hospitals should make a real difference to health services in the county, offering the very latest facilities.
“In the background, we have been working closely with our NHS partners as they have considered potential sites for these two new hospitals.
“This will continue as the schemes are designed and the County Council will consider changes to the proposed Lancashire Central development, one of our key economic development sites to assist the Royal Preston site come forward.
“We will continue to be closely involved as the schemes are developed, particularly in relationship to transport planning.”
As the LDRS revealed at the time, the Cuerden site was the subject of a High Court legal wrangle between Brookhouse and the county council late last year. The company was contesting the process by which the local authority had selected a development partner for its part of the Cuerden site – however, there is no record on the Courts and Tribunal Judiciary website of a High Court judgement having since been issued in relation to the matter.
The Lancashire and South Cumbria New Hospitals Programme has stressed that the use of the land it has purchased the new Royal Preston is still subject to public consultation – and that the NHS remains open to the suggestion of alternative locations. In that eventuality – or should the government cash for the new building not be forthcoming upon conclusion of an ongoing review into planned new hospital facilities nationwide – an “exit strategy” has been devised.
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