PATIENTS at Okehampton Medical Centre will soon have extra facilities and services as work on a long awaited new building is due to start in the next few days.

The building at the centre will house a dispensary, waiting area, five consulting rooms and a treatment room. There will also be additional staff facilities, including a meeting room.

Builders are carrying out the final tests on the site groundwork before the start of construction. The team carrying out the work is Devon Contractors, and the proposed construction time is around 26 weeks, subject to weather conditions.

The building is to be constructed on the site of the old Memorial Hospital, opposite the existing medical centre. The centre's partners bought the hospital building from the primary care trust after Okehampton Community Hospital opened in 2004.

Many options were considered to redevelop the site, but it was eventually decided the most viable option was to construct a new building on the footprint of the previous hospital. The old building was demolished earlier this year to make way for the new building.

Alison Shelton, practice, dispensary and finance manager for Okehampton Medical Centre, said: 'We are all very excited about this and it has been a long time coming.

'We are working to beyond capacity at the moment and this will be a welcome addition. As the residential areas in the town expand, so does the demand and we are finding it increasingly difficult to offer all the clinics that we would like to in order to improve patient care.

'There will be a larger dispensary which will help the dispensers to provide a more efficient service and we will continue to do the rural deliveries.

'It is hoped that we may be able to offer visiting consultants a room and increase the number of clinics that we currently provide.

'Eventually, more clinics will be offered, which will reduce waiting times for appointments, and overall patient care will improve. It will be a slow but steady increase as demand increases.

'There is a greater focus on preventative care and treatment of long-term conditions so this will be reflected in what is being offered.'

Initially, the new building will not lead to the creation of any jobs, though as the centre expands this could change due to higher demand.

An important aspect of the new building is to commemorate the old hospital that stood on the site. During demolition of the old building earlier this year, memorial stones and the lintel from above the main door were saved with the intention of placing them in a new memorial garden.

This includes a stone laid by Lady Clinton on May 27 1925, that lay hidden for the best part of a century before it was unearthed during the demolition process.

Mrs Shelton said: 'The partners and I are very aware of the sensitive issues around the Memorial Hospital for the people of Okehampton. We want it to be an area where people can sit and enjoy it.'

Patients who can park off-site are being urged to do so, as while disruption to the car park will be minimal, there will be times when deliveries made to the construction site will affect the centre car park.

All clinics and services will be running as usual throughout the build.