A new £400m hospital could be open in as few as five and a half years – a board deciding on the preferred options to build a new general hospital in the town has heard.

The board of Princess Alexandra Hospital (PAH) agreed to proceed with a preferred option plan to build a new hospital in Harlow on greenfield land close to the M11 junction 7a, using a blended finance mix of public and private funding – even though how much money is to come from each strand is being worked through now.

And although the hospital could be opening its doors to the first patients as early as 2024, it will not be fully operational for some time after that.

Through a phased transfer of services the first to start operating will be the lower risk ones followed by high risk and acute services.

PAH CEO Lance McCarthy said that other options may come to the fore as the hospital develops its strategic and outline business cases.

The board is now developing a preconsultation business case ahead of a three month public consultation which will be followed by a two month feedback.

That will help develop the strategic outline case before an outline business case is eventually approved at the end of 2020.

It is hoped a final business case will be approved by the summer of 2021 and contracts are signed in August 2021.

Mr McCarthy said: “We are about two years away realistically from having a full business case if everything runs smoothly and assuming it runs smoothly funding comes through as part of that process and then there is a three and a half year build.

“So realistically we are five and half years away from a new hospital.”

The hospital, which will be built to cater for 53,000 extra homes being planned for the area over the next 20 years, will also have the potential to expand by 20 per cent.

As many as 650 homes could eventually be built where the current hospital stands.

Michael Meredith, director of strategy, said work on the new hospital’s size, phasing, costing and traffic analysis has led to the belief that building afresh in east Harlow was the best option.

He said: “Where the hospital is located has one significant impact and that impact is time and time has an impact on cost of delivering the services.

“Time for construction of an offsite option would be three and a half years and time for construction on-site is five and a half years.

“We have also looked at what an on-site option would have on delivering our existing business.

“We would potentially have contractors on that site for five and a half years. It can be done and has been done.

“But the advice is it would have a significant impact on our business and fundamentally we would have to work really closely with contractors to decant into a new building and then demolish the existing building.

“The other impact time has is on value for money – the longer it takes to build a new building the longer it takes us to start delivering the clinical benefits and the financial benefits of the new hospital.”