HOORAY and up she rises - a £20.5 million project for a new hospital in York takes shape.

Work is rapidly progressing on the building of a new Nuffield Hospital on the site of the former Nestl Rowntree canteen in Haxby Road.

The site team from York-based Shepherd Construction is constructing a new bedroom block and rooftop plant room as an extension to the existing Edwardian three-storey building, with the transformation scheduled for completion by December.

By the time the Nuffield Hospital moves out of its leased premises in the Purey Cust building, and into a new hospital almost twice the size, it will mean employment for another 50 people bringing the total to 210.

Sally Brown, matron and project director, is overseeing the complete re-configuration and refurbishment of the 1912 building into a modern hospital with 40 bedrooms, three operating theatres, imaging and physiotherapy departments and a health screening unit.

She said that no decision had yet been made about what to do with the lease on the Purey Cust at Precentors Court in the heart of York's city centre.

"It may or may not continue for health care," she said, adding that the ultimate decision would be in the hands of its owner, the Purey Cust Trust.

The new building, with retained faade, is Shepherd's third contract for Nuffield Hospitals but the first in which an in-house team has been involved with both structural and architectural design.

Updated: 09:46 Tuesday, March 02, 2004