A £10 MILLION York centre aimed at providing better mental health care for women is set to be approved despite a wave of objections from people living nearby.

NHS North Yorkshire and York has drawn up plans for an extension to its current facilities on the Clifton Hospital site, which would mean female patients no longer having to travel elsewhere in the UK to receive psychiatric treatment.

It would include 22 bedrooms as well as a gym and café and would also see the number of staff based there rise from 66 to 126 in what the health trust has described as one of its biggest mental health schemes for many years.

As revealed by The Press last week, the proposals led to local residents setting up an action group in a bid to block the extension, claiming it would be too big and too close to their homes, as well as reducing their privacy and creating extra traffic in the area.

But City of York Council’s planning committee is tomorrow expected to allow the Bluebeck Drive scheme, which would accommodate 26 female patients, to go ahead, although if this happens it will still have to be referred to the Government for a final decision.

“Currently, patients in need of this type of care are being treated in locations remote from their home, with consequent difficulties in their long-term recovery,” said a report on the plans which will go before the meeting.

“The proposal would link with a long-standing low secure facility for the treatment of male patients, with the opportunity for co-use of specialist staff with the appropriate range of expertise.

“The secluded woodland setting of the site provides a suitable clinical environment to aid the recovery of the patient.”

Planners added other sites which lie outside York’s Green Belt had been considered to house the facility, including Bootham Park Hospital, but were deemed unsuitable.

Rawcliffe and Clifton Without Parish Councils have both opposed the plans while 41 letters of objection have also been sent.

NHS North Yorkshire and York has said it has worked with the residents and statutory agencies such as the council to address these concerns.