{"id":96266,"date":"2025-08-27T12:15:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-27T12:15:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/96266\/"},"modified":"2025-08-27T12:15:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T12:15:08","slug":"masterplan-for-new-fort-william-hospital-updated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/96266\/","title":{"rendered":"Masterplan for new Fort William hospital updated"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">A masterplan for a new hospital in Fort William has been updated to increase the building&#8217;s overall floor space.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">NHS Highland is working with Highland Council on the proposed \u00a3137m replacement for the town&#8217;s 60-year-old Belford Hospital.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">It is to be built in the Blar Mhor area, near Caol, and the Scottish government allocated funding <a target=\"_self\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/cqx8w4lgpzwo\" class=\"sc-f9178328-0 bGFWdi\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">in its 2025-26 Budget <\/a>for the project.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">The total gross floor space has been increased &#8211; from 8,500 sq metres to 12,400 sq metres &#8211; to meet up-to-date healthcare design standards which require larger clinical spaces.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">People in Lochaber have been campaigning for a replacement for the town&#8217;s Belford Hospital for more than 20 years, and hundreds of people took part <a target=\"_self\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/c29wnnz0e14o\" class=\"sc-f9178328-0 bGFWdi\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">in a protest last March<\/a> to express their frustration at delays to the project.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">A replacement for the Belford was first suggested in the 1990s.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">The masterplan has been prepared ahead of permission in principle being sought for building the new hospital.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 hxuGS\">NHS Highland said earlier this year that construction <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nhshighland.scot.nhs.uk\/about\/service-redesign\/lochaber-health-and-social-care-redesign\/service-model-for-new-hospital\/#Frequentlyaskedquestions\" class=\"sc-f9178328-0 bGFWdi\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">could potentially start in October 2027<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A masterplan for a new hospital in Fort William has been updated to increase the building&#8217;s overall floor&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":96267,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-96266","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-healthcare","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}