North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust announces expanded services at Stamford and Rutland Hospital to ease pressure at Peterborough City Hospital

Learning and development rooms will also be created for medical students, and a new parking is planned at the Ryhall Road entrance.

Trust chief executive Caroline Walker said some funding had already been secured to pay for the plans, which include replacing the current procedure rooms and more staff.

“We have put some bids in already, not all of which have been successful, but we have some money and will keep bidding for different pots of money," she said.

“We are confident we will get the money to redevelop the site. It's just a question of over how many years we can do the development and how quickly we can do it.”

At this week’s Trust meeting, members were also told the old hospital site had been put back up for sale.

Its sale to a nursing home had been agreed in May 2020, but fell through 18 months into the process.

“We were hampered not only by the pandemic, but also by the fact that Stamford is a very complex site with marked archaeological and heritage interests," said Dr Kanchan Rege, the Trust's deputy chief executive and medical director.

“Halfway through the procedure the rules over nursing home changed and we had to offer a bigger site for the same number of units so there were all these confounding factors.

“In the end the bidder decided it was too high risk for the funders and they pulled out of the sale.”

The Trust then decided to sell the site as three plots and has already attracted interest from a housing developer.

“Encouragingly we have already had one or two expressions of interest and we hope to complete this process by the end of the year,” Dr Rege added.

Its vision for Stamford Hospital was split into improvements in cancer treatment, specialist eye care, elective infusion and local anaesthetic surgery.

They are tied to its new clinical strategy developed as part of its Integrated Care Plan, giving Stamford and Rutland patients shorter trips to get treatment and easing the pressure at Peterborough.

There will be more chemotherapy infusion at Stamford, multi-disciplinary clinics and access to palliative care nurses for end-of-life treatment as part of revamped cancer treatment.

“We hope to provide a cancer centre so that patients can come here for their initial outpatient appointments and maybe have a one-stop clinic in prostate cancer or skin excision," Dr Rege explained.

“They will have their complex diagnostics either at Stamford or Peterborough, but all will have their follow-up care and follow-up infusions at Stamford."

A specialist eye centre will be created with improved services for treating conditions such as glaucoma and cataracts in line with the area's older than average demographic.

New procedure rooms will be built to provide care for treatments which don’t need general anaesthesia as part of an expanded local anaesthetic surgery.

An expanded elective infusion service will see a range of treatments offered seven days a week, including chemotherapy, haematology and paediatric infusions

And some planned care or surgery which does not require overnight stays in hospital will be moved from Peterborough to Stamford.

“Instead of coming to Peterborough for regular blood transfusions and other intravenous treatments, we wish to extend our elective infusion centre so that these day-to-day procedures can be performed safely, quickly and locally in Stamford,” Dr Rege added.