Millions of pounds are to be spent upgrading Colchester’s Primary Care Centre so it can accommodate services being relocated from Essex County Hospital.

Colchester Hospital University Foundation NHS Trust (CHUFT) announced two years ago it would be closing Essex County Hospital in Lexden Road, and many services have already moved off the site.

Now the trust has revealed two major departments from the hospital – ophthalmology and eye services, and ear, nose and throat (ENT) and audiology – will be moving to the upper floors of the Primary Care Centre in Turner Road, next door to Colchester General Hospital.

The centre, which was built a decade ago, is used as a walk-in centre and GP clinic on the ground floor but the upper floors are mostly unused aside from some office space – despite the centre being intended for clinical use when it was constructed. It is owned by Realise Health, a joint NHS and private sector funding organisation set up under Labour to raise investment for the NHS.

The first floor will be home to eye services, which handle around 60,000 patients a year, and will include some operating theatres for procedures such as cataracts removal.

ENT and audiology services, which see up to 35,000 patients annually, will be placed on around half of the second floor.

Architects working for CHUFT have submitted a planning application to Colchester Borough Council to add more lifts to the Primary Care Centre, which are needed to both cope with increased patient numbers and to take hospital beds.

Subject to planning permission and final design approval, it is hoped work will start in January and be completed by September 2017.

Nick Chatten, special projects director at CHUFT, said: “At Essex County Hospital you were wandering down long corridors, up stairs, through alleyways almost. It’s great we can focus on how patients use services rather than some of the more Byzantine lay-outs we had before.

“It’s all moving in the right direction – everything is pretty much where we need it to be.

“We are gearing up for a fairly intensive period, and it will be good to start building things and seeing spades go into the ground, after all the planning.

“There is also a degree of future-proofing in all that we do.”

Final cost figures are still being worked out with the construction firm and will be dependent on the design, but it is understood the Primary Care Centre upgrade work will cost “several million” pounds.

Dental and oral surgery services will also move to the Primary Care Centre.

Mr Chatten confirmed parking was being looked at to ensure the centre could cope with the additional patient numbers.

CHUFT has also provided an update on the overall project to close down Essex County Hospital.

Mr Chatten revealed that negotiations with developer Linden Homes for sale of the site had fallen through, and the trust was now re-assessing its marketing strategy.

However with the trust’s aim of clearing the Essex County Hospital site by the end of 2017 or early 2018 on target, it still has plenty of time to secure sale of the land.

“Selling presents a challenge and we will work through that,” said Mr Chatten.

“But the really important thing is how we deliver patient care and my focus in all of this is about making sure we create an environment where patients are safe and that is at the heart of everything.”

Breast care services and nuclear medicine are still set to move into a brand new diagnostics centre due to be built next to Gainsborough Wing at Colchester General Hospital.

Work on this project it is hoped, again subject to planning permission, will begin in November and be completed by December 2017. The cost of building the centre is funded by NHS England through Alliance Medical Ltd which has the national contract to run regional PET-CT scanners.

It means Colchester will be home to one of the Eastern regional scanners, along with three MRI scanners and the trust’s own gamma cameras and SPECT-CT scanner – equipment costing £5million.

This work builds on much of the outpatient physiotherapy service run by Anglian Community Enterprise in Gainsborough Wing being moved into the community.