HEALTH chiefs hope to build a 30-bed unit at Earls House Hospital, in Durham, as part of a shake-up of mental health services.

The County Durham and Darlington Priority Services Trust has won permission from the city council for the development, in Lanchester Road.

The hospital has five "villas" and caters for people with learning difficulties and some elderly people with acute problems.

However, the number of beds at the hospital has reduced from 80 to 20, and trust officials are looking to see if services and beds provided at Chester-le-Street District Hospital and the town's Highfield Hospital can be relocated. There are plans to build a community hospital in Chester-le-Street, possibly on the district hospital site, to complement the new Dryburn Hospital being built by North Durham Health Care Trust.

The Earls House development, which could cost several million pounds, depends on a private finance initiative scheme being put together.

The trust is also looking at the role of the County Hospital, on the outskirts of Durham City centre.

Chris Parsons, the trust's director of facilities, said: "We have carried out research on the property at Earls House so we can determine what we think is the best way forward.

"It is very much at the initial stage and we have yet to start consultation. It isn't a case of us reducing services or selling the land to an outside body.

"The provision for patients with learning disabilities has been very much reduced here, and the question at the back of people's minds has been what can be done. The idea would be to move beds from Chester-le-Street and Highfield to Earls House."

Mr Parsons said the county's hospitals had suffered from under-investment, but that was now changing with developments such as the new hospitals in Durham and Bishop Auckland