THE vision for the future of Slough’s hospital has been laid out as a long-running merger looks set to be finally completed.

Andrew Morris, chief executive of the Frimley Park Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, revealed his ambitions for the Heatherwood and Wexham Park Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (HWPHT) should a potential merger of the two trusts be completed later this month.

Speaking at the Slough Borough Council health and scrutiny panel meeting on Monday, Mr Morris assured councillors that Slough’s residents would not have to travel long distances to receive services, and outlined a 'multi-million pound’ investment project to bring Wexham Park Hospital up to 'modern standards’. He said: “From a Frimley Park perspective, we know we cannot survive on our own as a hospital. As an NHS organisation, we have to be making a 4% saving every year for the foreseeable future, and a transaction like this enables us to take more back office costs out.

“Having a bigger catchment area enables us to provide a more local service.

“Patients go elsewhere for some services, such as London, but if we work together we can provide a more local service.

“There is no question that we would want to close it [Wexham Park] or run it down.

“We want to build it up. We have some ideas around what we want to do, but we need to secure the right level of funding to bring the Wexham Park site up to modern standards.” Mr Morris confirmed that Frimley Park was still in negotiations with the Department for Health about funding for the transaction, and he expected to hear in 'the next few weeks’ whether the funding has been secured.

The investment project has been estimated to cost around £80m over the next two to three years to improve the services at Wexham Park.

“We are very keen to progress this hospital and we do see a vibrant future for the hospital services on the Wexham site,” Mr Morris said.

“We want to make significant investment in the next two to three years and we want to secure the elective centre with the Heatherwood site.

“We are talking about £25m for the emergency department, £10m for the maternity unit, and £45m for backlog maintenance for things that the trust has not made the investment required to keep the estate in good order.” Mr Morris branded July 24 as 'D-Day’ as the respective hospital trust boards will meet to decide whether to support the merger or not, with the merger to go live in the autumn.