WORK on a £8.5m community hospital in the heart of a County Durham market town has moved a step closer.

With the last of the staff and patients transferred from Chester-le-Street's old hospital into temporary ward facilities at the town's Highfield Hospital this week, demolition work can now begin on the existing hospital.

The past six months has seen Highfield Hospital, off Newcastle Road, transformed into comfortable new ward facilities to take the influx of patients and staff from the old hospital.

Former nurses' homes at Highfield have also been converted to accommodate temporarily some of the transferred services.

Most facilities at the existing hospital have been transferred to Highfield, but some, including clinics relying on radiology, are now being provided at the University Hospital of North Durham.

The Chester-le-Street Community Hospital, which is to be built as part of a private finance initiative, is due to open in May next year.

It will include 40 beds for in-patients, with four palliative care beds, an elderly day hospital for 24 patients and a full range of out-patient facilities, including dentistry, podiatry and speech and language therapy.

Other facilities will include support services and therapies including a 12-place physiotherapy treatment unit and gym and a children's centre, to be transferred from Chester-le-Street Health Centre.

North Durham Health Care Trust chairman Angela Ballatti said: "We are now a step closer to providing modern community health facilities for local people.

"The new facilities at Highfield Hospital will provide a comfortable and attractive environment for patients and staff transferred from the existing hospital during the development.

"If follows long consultation with clinicians, staff and with people who use our services to ensure the hospital will offer the standards and quality that the people of Chester-le-Street deserve."

MP for North Durham Kevan Jones felt health care in Chester-le-Street was entering a new era.

He said: "I am delighted that plans for a new community hospital development at Chester-le-Street have been unveiled.

"This new development will benefit a great many local people over the coming years, and I look forward to watching progress on the new community hospital in 2003.