DEMANDS on mental health hospital services in the North-East and North Yorkshire are set to be relieved after plans for a new £29 million infirmary were announced.

The Tees, Esk and Wear Valley NHS Trust, which is responsible for mental health services in York, is looking for sites to build a replacement for the city's closed Bootham Park Hospital.

Bootham Park was closed suddenly last October and patients relocated to hospitals in the North-East after the Care Quality Commission found the patients were at “significant risk of harm”, forcing 30 inpatients to be discharged or relocated and affecting 400 outpatients.

Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust, which took over the running the mental health service, said patients were being cared for at Roseberry Park in Middlesbrough, West Park, in Darlington, The Friarage, in Northallerton, Sandwell Park, in Hartlepool and one at Lanchester Road, in Durham.

Brent Kilmurray, the trust’s chief operating officer, said it wanted a 60-bed facility split into single sex wards for either adults or older people, with a floor space of 5,500 square metres.

He said that as a large organisation, the trust had several options when it came to raising the money needed, including its reserves and borrowing from the Department of Health.

Mr Kilmurray said: “The sum of money does not necessarily worry us as an organisation, but we need to make sure we get good value.”

Deputy medical director Dr Stephen Wright said they hoped those 60 acute beds could cater for York patients, putting an end to out-of-area placements.