The news that the plans for Berwick’s brand new hospital on the Infirmary site are going before the Councils strategic Planning Committee is excellent for those who dwell in North Northumberland, and that the new facility should be up and running in 2023/24 financial year.
By that time the promise of a new hospital at Berwick upon Tweed will have been a financially viable project for a decade, ever since in June 2014 when Northumberland County Council’s Labour Group organised an extremely cheap rate loan of £25M to make Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trusts dreams a reality. The power behind the throne at Northumberland County Council at that time was Councillor Scott Dickinson who held the post of Business Chairperson on the Councils Cabinet.
We caught up with Councillor Dickinson the current deputy leader of the County labour group, who was busily organising much needed meals on wheels deliveries for the elderly from his base in Hadston, part of the Berwick Constituency. He told us “I’m so pleased that health improvements are on the move for residents in North Northumberland. It seems like a lifetime since I persuaded the Labour Group to financially support health improvements through the building of a new hospital facility in Berwick upon Tweed and now that its moving on to the final planning stage I’m pleased I did”.
“Many of our (Labour) group members at the time hadn’t realised how many tourists come to North Northumberland from April to October each year and how that places immense pressure on the current facilities sited at Berwick’s aging Infirmary, I was so pleased that they accepted my arguments and that the Leader of Council Grant Davey immediately granted the loan facility to develop and improve matters for local residents and visitors”. “I have been keeping an eye on progress ever since and I’m very glad and extremely hopeful that the new designs which are going before a planning committee in the near future will get over this final hurdle.”
History shows that the only disenter to the granting of this loan at the Councils Cabinet was the Tory Leader, Councillor Peter Jackson.
https://www.northumbria.nhs.uk/new-25-million-berwick-hospital-better-patient-care/
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