PLANS for the new head-quarters for mental health care in East Lancashire have been unveilled by an NHS foundation trust.

An initial 72-bed unit will be constructed on land between Shadsworth Road and Haslingden Road, Blackburn, with an antici-pated opening promised for 2017.

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Later, a further 36 in-patient beds and an eight-bed psychiatric intensive care unit will come online, as part of the Lancashire Care proposals.

If the scheme secures planning permission from Blackburn with Darwen Council it will bring an end to a seven-year debate, which has seen several other sites suggested and a number of models dis-cussed for the county’s mental health services.

Land at the Pendle beauty spot Gib Hill was originally earmarked as early as 2008, with Colne’s Regent Street, Burnley General Hospital and Shuttleworth Mead, near Padiham, all con-sidered and rejected in turn, before the Blackburn site was adopted.

Architects have designed the hospital – which aims to have a ‘non-institutional’ outlook – around a central ‘street’, connecting the wards with a cafe, shop, tribunal rooms, hall and fitness suite.

Agent Katy Barry said: “The three functional acute and three advanced care wards are positioned to the back of the site away from Shadsworth Road, bene-fitting from generous landscaping, natural light and views across the countryside.”

The intensive care facility will have its own entrance and be at the southern end of the main building, near staff offices. And the wards, each of which have dining, lounge, quiet and activity rooms, open out onto courtyards.

Several suggestions have been made to avoid disturbing common pip-istrelle bats, which forage on the identified site, including retaining a drainage channel on the southern boundary and introducing tree and shrub planting, along Old Bank Lane, to reduce illum-ination levels.

The new unit will eventually replace wards at Burnley General and the Pendle View and Hill View units at the former Queen’s Park Hospital site.