​Chesterfield has an amazing new facility - and I hope you never get to see it

We recently had the chance to take a tour round the new casualty department which is being built at Chesterfield Royal Hospital.

The purpose-built Urgent and Emergency Care Development, or UECD, to give it its full title, will replace the Royal’s existing A&E department and is due to open in the summer.

The centre is still very much a building site, with work continuing to finish the project, but you can still see what an incredible medical facility it’s going to be when it’s finished.

Having had a loved one in the existing casualty department in the last 12 months, I can tell you it’s going to be a huge improvement for both patients and those providing critical care for them.

The last point is really important as top-class facilities will help attract the very best medics, doctors and nurses to care for us here in north Derbyshire.

It will even be able to cope with major trauma incidents – from serious motorway pile-ups, right up to the situations on the scale of the Salisbury Novichok nerve agent attack.

As anyone who has ever had as much as a lean-to porch added to their property will know, building works are notorious for running over-budget and over time.

That seems particularly true of major public infrastructure projects (HS2, anyone?), where costs seem to spiral upwards at an eye-watering rate.

So it’s a massive feather in the cap of the team behind the Royal scheme that they’re bringing this massive new building and hi-tech medical facility on time and on budget. And it’s extra impressive when you think how difficult that must be in the midst of a pandemic and with soaring energy costs and prices for raw materials.

The UECD is not just going to be a new building, it will be a state-of-the-art medical facility which has been designed in collaboration with the health teams at the Royal to provide the very best care for those when they need it most.

Which is why, even though it is an incredible facility for Chesterfield to have, I really hope you don’t ever need to see it as a patient.