BUILDING work on a new £9m mental health unit on the Great Western Hospital site is due to start next month.

The building time- table was confirmed after the board of Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust (AWP) appointed Kier Western as the main contractor for the project.

The £9.2m unit will provide services for older adults with mental health problems, including in-patient beds.

The beds will be divided between older people with functional mental health problems such as severe depression, bipolar disorder, severe anxiety and schizophrenia and people with dementia, including Alzheimer's disease.

The new unit will replace the ageing Victoria Hospital in Okus Road and will be next to the GWH and Swindon Intermediate Care Centre (SWICC).

Kier Western will begin work on the site in the next few weeks and the new facilities are expected to be up and running by the end of next year.

Malcolm Sinclair, project director for AWP, said: "We are very much looking forward to Kier Western starting work on our building.

"It will be an exciting for the project team and staff in our older adult services to see the facilities take shape. Because the level of design detail we have been involved in we almost feel that we know the building already.

"The building will provide the excellent standard of therapeutic environment that our service users deserve."

The new facility will mean that older patients will no longer have to travel between different hospital sites across Swindon to receive the full range of treatment and care that they need.

This will help to minimise anxiety for patients and will help to ensure that they receive co-ordinated care from specialist mental and mainstream health services.

John Williams, Kier Western's construction director, said: "We are delighted to be appointed as main contractor for this project. The project will benefit from our previous experience of constructing specialist mental healthcare facilities for older adults."