Full council consider hospital support package

A special meeting of the OIC’s full council will consider last week’s recommendation that the council offer substantial support to NHS Orkney to help enable the development of a new hospital in Kirkwall.

NHS Orkney is currently considering three sites for the hospital, at Corse West, Grainbank and Scapa. At each of the sites infrastructure to improve road access is likely to be required, along with further enabling works such as drainage.

To assist with this, the policy and resources committee, which met in private last Wednesday, recommended that the council is prepared, in principle, to provide funding of up to £1.5 million towards infrastructure costs, once detailed proposals are made and assessed.