This has now culminated in an agreed £130m scheme to be developed by the Trust's PFI partner. SHP will continue to advise the Trust through the preferred bidder stages of scheme development, which is set to begin late 2006.

The development process has been subject to various reviews by the local Strategic Health Authority and more recently by the Government as part of its major hospital Private Finance Initiative programme.

Ben Reid, Chairman of Walsall Hospitals NHS Trust, said: "This is wonderful news for everyone and we are delighted the Government has backed the plans for our new hospital. The people of Walsall have waited a long time for this decision...."

The major investment plans have been urgently required for many years, and some of the buildings on the hospital site are over 150 years old. The scheme is expected to be completed by 2010 providing a state of the art hospital for the people of Walsall.

The plans are currently being finalised to enable the deal to be signed with the Trusts private sector partners and commencement of enabling works is due to start very shortly.

The project has involved the development of a Diagnostic and Treatment Centre, a Women and children's unit, a new Pathology department, adult Acute inpatient facilities and a Multi-professional education centre at the Manor Hospital site.

The leadership role covers project management activities to support the Project Director and co-ordination of technical advisory input to the process.

The role of SHP has involved a complete service, capital and facility planning process leading to the development of a Public Sector Comparator. The steps have included site master planning; option appraisals for service configurations and development of the clinical brief to enable output specifications to be produced; evaluation of ITN submissions and more recently validation of the private sector partner's design details. Capacity planning has also been a major feature to ensure that service remodelling was in line with a wider geographical review of acute services being led by the Strategic Health Authority.