MALVERN people have a new £3m state-of-the-art health centre in the town.

The primary care centre and separate crche replaces the existing practice in Avenue Road and has been jointly funded by South Worcestershire Primary Care Trust and specialist health and social care investor Prime.

It is set to benefit about 8,000 residents.

The building comprises 10 consultation rooms with two special treatment rooms, an administration area and meeting rooms.

A total of seven GPs will be based at the 9,800sq ft Whiteacres Medical Centre, in Malvern's Townsend Way, which will also provide facilities for health services such as community nurses and health visitors.

The separate Kiddi Caru day nursery on site will cater for up to 96 children in specially designed premises which include eight activity rooms, a cot room, nappy changing, toilets and a small commercial kitchen together with external play areas.

The project, built by Weaver, is a joint initiative between South Worcestershire Primary Care Trust, Prime and the Childcare Corporation.

The centre began seeing patients earlier this month. Prime's managing director Leighton Chumbley said: "We've built up an extremely strong relationship with GPs and staff and are delighted their new building is now completed.

"Many of our buildings take on the role as a real hub in the local community and I'm confident this will be the case in Malvern.

"It's great to see patients and staff finally have the state of the art, purpose-built facilities they deserve, allowing them to tackle health and social care challenges at their root."

Meanwhile, in a separate project, work is under way on building a new health centre in the town's Pickersleigh Road, which will replace the Court Road surgery and existing Malvern Health Centre in Lansdowne Crescent.

Nigel Higenbottam, assistant director of primary care with the PCT, said building work was due to start on site in April, after the former site has been cleared, and aimed to be completed by summer 2007.

The project board for the new Malvern hospital is set to submit an agreed outline business case for that scheme at its next meeting on Wednesday, February 1.

The board will then consider it for submission to the strategic health authority, before the PCT can begin the task of selecting a preferred developer for the scheme.