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Royal Liverpool: A&E department gets midnight move to new home

BBC A room at the new Royal Liverpool HospitalBBC
Patients will not be treated on wards at the new hospital and will instead have individual private rooms

The A&E department at the Royal Liverpool Hospital is set for a midnight move into its new home.

The old department will close to walk-in patients at 23:59 BST and will reopen at the new site at midnight to treat people on Thursday.

The A&E move will be the final part of a 24-day plan to transfer patients from the old site into the new hospital.

The hospital opening has been delayed by five years and costs spiralled from £335m to an expected £1bn-plus.

The 646-bed facility will be one of the largest acute hospitals in the country with state-of-the-art facilities.

Royal Liverpool University Hospital
The hospital was originally expected to open in 2017 but was hit by setbacks

Chief executive officer James Sumner said: "Moving our A&E department is the final piece of the jigsaw for the move into our state of the art new Royal Liverpool University Hospital.

"Our new A&E is a massive improvement on the old one with more assessment areas and operating theatres and diagnostics close by, supporting faster access to essential services for emergency patients."

Hospital bosses have promised it would herald a new way of working with every patient getting a single room with an en-suite bathroom.

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