A proposed diagnostics centre for Stockton town centre is expected to deliver 150,000 tests a year in a drive to treat illness early.

Developers say the Tees Valley Community Diagnostics Centre will bring 130 new jobs by 2026 to 2027 and form a key part of the town centre’s regeneration. It aims to take more preventative action to help patients rather than rely on from hospitals.

The centre, for the North Tees and Hartlepool and South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trusts, will provide cardiology, pathology, respiratory and sleep services, and radiology including CT, MRI, X-ray and ultrasound. The proposed two-storey building off High Street, Bridge Road and Tower Street is expected to take up to 86 patients per hour with 70 staff there at a time between 8am and 8pm.

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It is intended as a highly accessible facility with excellent public transport access, to improve people’s health, “streamline the patient journey” and deliver “state-of-the-art care practices”, say the plans submitted by North Tees and Hartlepool Solutions in May. It aims to put the services at the heart of the community and meet significant unmet demand for tests.

Its objectives include reducing health inequalities in one of the country’s most deprived areas, improving access, productivity and efficiency, increasing diagnostic capacity and delivering a better and more personalised experience for patients. It is described as a “key anchor” for the ongoing town centre waterfront redevelopment, which includes the demolition of the Castlegate Shopping Centre, Swallow Hotel and multi-storey car park, to “create a vibrant, modern town centre for the future”,

The development aims to create a new urban park connecting High Street and the Tees. This first development on the southern part of the site is expected to bring people into the town and encourage them to visit other facilities.

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A design statement says the centre will come with 28 parking spaces, five accessible bays, two ambulance bays, electric vehicle charging points, 16 cycle spaces, a Bridge Road main entrance and drop-off point on Tower Street. It says the plans “create the opportunity to connect High Street/Bridge Road to the waterfront” and “seek to reflect Stockton’s unique heritage and compliment the materiality and character of the town centre”.

It will feature a “generous arrival space”, a “welcoming, accessible and legible public realm that compliments the architecture, uses and functions of the building and knits the development into the wider townscape”.

The plans are proposed in a collaboration with the two NHS trusts and the North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board as a key part of “urgently needed” reform in diagnostics. Patients, families, GPs and the public are expected to be told more about the project with sessions, events, briefings, surveys, focus groups, bulletins, case studies and vlogs.