Balfour Beatty has been joined by the MP for Welwyn Garden City and Hatfield to mark the latest phase in the creation of the new £23m Queen Elizabeth II Hospital.

The four-storey facility, being built for the Assemble Community Partnership, is approximately half way to its completion and consists of 8,542 square metres of clinical and community space. It will provide an urgent care centre, open 24 hours a day, which will treat a wide range of minor illnesses and injuries, an outpatient unit, a diagnostics centre providing MRI, CT scans and X-rays, GP services, a purpose-built area for outpatient children's services, a breast unit, ante/post-natal care and much more.

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Working in partnership with award-winning architects Penoyre & Prasad to implement an environmentally friendly building, Balfour Beatty, which has recently been acknowledged as the leading provider of BREEAM rated buildings in the UK, is providing a green roof, solar panels, air source heat pumps and natural ventilation that will reduce energy consumption in the operation of the building.

Hospital diagnostic rooms are designed to enable multi-use, so they can be interchanged at any time. To ensure existing healthcare services remain unaffected by construction works, the new facility is being constructed next to the existing QEII Hospital with services transferred when complete.

Dr Hari Pathmanathan, a GP Board Member of East and North Hertfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group, the local, GP-led NHS organisation that has planned the new hospital and the health care it will provide, said: "The opportunity to design a hospital building and its services around the needs of our patients, now and in years to come, is a huge privilege. The building itself will be really impressive but, more importantly, the services it provides will improve the quality of patient care for my patients and many thousands of others every year."

(CD/JP)