A RADIOTHERAPY unit will be built at Worcestershire Royal Hospital after health chiefs gave plans the green light.

Health chiefs from Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust gave the formal go ahead for the unit to be built at Worcester at a meeting at the Alexandra Hospital in Redditch today.

The decision has already been ratified by leaders at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust, the trust’s project partner.

Providing radiotherapy in Worcestershire is considered important because at the moment patients have to travel out of county to Cheltenham and Wolverhampton at a time when they are very ill which can cause them both extra expense and stress.

Paul Crawford, aged 69, of Highfield Close, Droitwich, who had to travel to Cheltenham for his radiotherapy for throat cancer welcomed the decision to build the unit in Worcester.

He had to travel more than 3,000 miles backwards and forwards to Cheltenham over six weeks while he battled the illness.

He said: “It makes sense that it should be in Worcester. I think it was a robust decision by all the people involved. I think it is the best solution for the location of the site.”

In a meeting dominated by revelations about “major” care failings at the Alex, including patients having to be prescribed water and eat food with their fingers, the radiotherapy decision helped lift the sombre mood.

The recommendation to build the unit at the Royal has met resistance in the north of the county.

Redditch MP Karen Lumley presented a petition to the trust containing 2,000 signatures asking for the unit to be based at the Alex.

Mr Adel Makar, consultant urological surgeon and lead cancer clinician at Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, said: “There has been a very long process to determine the most appropriate site for this new facility and now that a decision has been made we can really focus on developing the best possible service for the people of Worcestershire.”

The unit is scheduled to be up and running by December 2013.

Health bosses carried out a review to decide which was the best site and six sites were looked at in total, three at each hospital.

The trust has secured land next to the existing hospital site which would provide the car parking spaces which would otherwise have been lost when the unit is built on what is now the Royal’s A&E car park.

The trust will now prepare a business case which will looked at by regional health chiefs from NHS West Midlands, the strategic health authority.