THREE health centre developments look set to go-ahead after NHS bosses found different ways to fund them.

The LIFT projects at Clitheroe Community Hospital, Colne Health Centre and Great Harwood Health Centre were indefinitely suspended by NHS East Lancashire last year.

Health chiefs did not think the PCT would be able to afford the £28million schemes or their private finance initiative repayments.

However, the trust board set up a ‘Locality Development Programme’, which looked at using the organisation’s own capital.

It found that by reducing the scale of the schemes, new build centres could be delivered for just £10.3million, with the existing centres and surrounding lands owned by the trust sold to offset their cost.

Under the plans, a 4,000sq metre hospital facility will be built next to the existing hospital in Ribblesdale and surplus land sold off.

A new 2,500sq metre health centre will be built in Colne, with the existing health centre site and part of a Craddock Road site disposed of. And in Great Harwood a new 1,700sq metre health centre will be built on the Albion Mill site.

Victoria Robertson, director of corporate and public affairs and locality manager, said: “The preferred options identified in this report represent an opportunity for NHS East Lancashire to address long standing investment needs.”

She said the new costs were much lower due to their smaller scale and the reduction in construction prices in the current economic climate. She said that existing facilities were deteriorating and no longer fit for purpose and that repairs would have cost more than £725,000.

NHS East Lancashire board members voted unanimously in favour of the proposals at a board meeting on Thursday.

But there is still uncertainty over who will own NHS estates when PCTs are scrapped in 2012, and the revised scheme must now be approved by the new NHS Lancashire cluster board and the new North of England strategic health authority.