BLACKBURN'S new super hospital will be almost three times the size of its predecessor -- and packed full of the most up-to-date medical facilities, health chiefs have revealed.

The £86million privately funded hospital, which will bring all the services from ageing Blackburn Royal Infirmary onto the same site as Queens Park Hospital, will add an extra 37,000 square metres to the 20,000 square metre site at present.

The full scale of plan was unveiled for the first time yesterday.

The project has increased in size and cost since it was first unveiled several years ago, with more facilities added into the scheme in the last 12 months during the planning stages.

Work is expected to start in the spring next year and will take three years to complete.

Bosses with Blackburn, Hyndburn and Ribble Valley NHS trust also expect to change the hospital's name from Queens Park once it is finished.

It will be built through a Private Finance Initiative, which means a private company will be paid over 25 years to build and run the extension, after which it will belong to the Blackburn, Hyndburn and Ribble Valley NHS Trust.

Management chose the designs submitted by Balfour Beatty Charterhouse Healthcare for the project because they fitted in with the current Queens Park building, which will remain.

The modern wave shaped building will house an updated accident and emergency department, 11 operating theatres compared with the current nine and an extra 18 in-patient beds, making a total of 672, among other services.

The main entrance to the hospital will be changed to the front of the new section and there will be extra car parking for 700 cars.

Preferred bidder Balfour Beatty has already put together three other hospital projects, including a £22million scheme for University College Hospital in London.

After keeping the plans firmly under wraps for months, management now wants to involve the staff, patients and public as closely as possible.

Simon Neville, project director, said: "We chose this option because it is in keeping with the current building. We have worked very hard on this and there is still a lot of work to do. We intend to go through all the plans for each