New cancer centre project takes 'huge step forward'

Plans for a new purpose-built cancer centre have moved "a huge step forward" after its design was finalised and submitted for council approval.

The public have been invited to comment on the plans for the facility at Cheltenham General Hospital.

Funded by the Cheltenham and Gloucester Hospitals Charity's Big Space Cancer Appeal, the centre will include modern treatment rooms, digital consultation suites and a therapeutic garden.

Richard Smith, the charity's associate director, said the "amazing plans" was a "really exciting stage for everybody" involved.

Smith said Cheltenham Borough Councill will now consider the planning application and the team was working "in the background" to get the build side of the project ready.

Big Space Cancer Appeal has already raised nearly £10m towards the £12m target for the project.

Julie Jenner, 60, from Wootton-under-Edge, who has been a patient at the existing oncology centre since she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015 and then lung cancer three years ago, said the new centre "will make all the difference to patients receiving life-changing news".

"Noone wants a cancer diagnosis. There's never going to be an easy way to be told that sort of news because it's life-changing.

"However, being told that news in a windowless room with just a couple of plastic chairs, a Formica table and a box of tissues is not as pleasant as somewhere with a light space.

"There's something sort of overwhelming about the depths, the darkness of a dark room," she said.

Dr Sam Gulgani, consultant clinical oncologist at Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, who has been involved in the project since 2010, said it was "really important" to deliver a "state-of-the-art treatment excellently".

"Part and parcel of that is also the environment within which we meet patients and families," he said.

"What we've achieved [with the design] is a beautiful, welcoming, well-lit space, which is conducive to important, critical and trusting relationships between patients and clinicians," he added.

Gulgani said it was also doubling consultation spaces, "projecting not just what we need now, but what we'll need for the next 10, 20 years".

Existing facilities in the current oncology centre will also be upgraded in the second phase.

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