Health care along the North Yorkshire coast has been given a major boost with the announcement of a major new multi-million pound development.

The Department of Health has approved the funding of a new £3.9m sterile supplies unit which will make the Scarborough and North-East Yorkshire Healthcare Trust one of the first in the country to meet tough new European standards.

Five small existing units in Whitby, Malton, Scarborough and Bridlington will be replaced by one new high-tech centre.

The new building, in Scarborough, will deal with the massive task of providing sterile surgical instruments, procedure packs and dressings for all the trust's hospitals.

And eventually it will also do the same for all the general practitioners, dentists and other health professionals throughout the trust's sprawling area.

The trust's chief executive, Bob Crawford, said the new building would also lead to other positive developments for health care in the area.

"When the sterile services move out of their current locations we will be able to provide better, permanent accommodation for our equipment library, which is currently housed in a Portakabin, and we will have additional space available in our theatre area for development.

"The crche meanwhile will relocate to a new site, but will both modernise and gain additional places in the process, greatly improving an important facility for staff."

Planning permission for the new development has already been granted and it is now anticipated that it should be open for business in early 2004.

It will provide sufficient capacity to supply the needs of GPs, dentists and others as new legislation comes into force making it impractical for them to continue to process their own equipment.

That in turn is expected to dramatically increase the annual workload, which currently stands at 23,000 theatre instrument trays, 46,000 supplementary single instruments and 17,000 procedure packs.

Mr Crawford said managers had worked hard to turn the project into reality and added: "This development is much needed and will be of tremendous benefit to us all."