HEALTH chiefs want to build a new £20 million A&E department at one of the country’s busiest hospitals, The Northern Echo can reveal.

NHS bosses say the accident and emergency department at the University Hospital of North Durham (UHND) in Durham City is currently receiving double the 30,000 patients a year it was built for back in 2001 and the “very significant change” needed cannot wait any longer.

They want to demolish the Grade II-listed but derelict Dryburn House, opposite the current A&E entrance, and build a new state-of-the-art health hub for emergency and urgent care, fit to serve the areas around Durham for decades to come.

Funding could come from a Private Finance Initiative (PFI), although no decisions have yet been taken.

Meanwhile, there are also multi-million pound plans to expand A&E services at Darlington Memorial Hospital (DMH), by expanding into the current entrance area and creating a new entrance elsewhere.

Professor Chris Gray, medical director at the County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust, said: “There’s an absolute need to do this. We can’t wait any longer.

“The facilities we’re delivering services from are too small. We have got to make a very significant change.”

The DMH project, which would cost several million pounds, could be finished by autumn 2016 and the UHND project completed by 2017.

The proposals come as A&E departments across the country are facing increasing pressure to meet waiting times targets.

Both schemes have been some time in the making, a Trust spokesman having first spoken publicly of “significant” plans last month.

The Trust has now asked Durham County Council for permission to demolish Dryburn House, built in 1824 for William Lloyd Wharton, a railway entrepreneur and colliery owner who helped found the Durham Regatta, served as High Sherriff and gifted Windy Hill to the city for the creation of Wharton Park.

Bosses say they looked various alternatives, including building on the hospital car park, courtyard and around Dryburn House, but none were suitable.

If the demolition gets the go-ahead, detailed designs for the new facility will be drawn up and put to the Trust board, which is said to be supportive of the idea, early next year.

A report on by planning agents Nathaniel Lichfield and Partners says there is currently not enough space for ambulances to park or turn and there are problems with the police and public parking at A&E and even thieves stealing from waiting ambulances.

A&E demand is growing by three per cent a year at UHND and two per cent a year at DMH.

More details on the plans can be found online at durham.gov.uk/planning, using the reference DM/15/00702/LB. Comments can be made until Thursday, April 16, and the council expects to make a decision on whether the Trust can demolish Dryburn House by early May.