THE SALE of a historic hospital has boosted healthcare and raised more than half a million pounds for the NHS according to heath bosses.
They say selling part of Fordingbridge Hospital raised £550,000 of vital funds for the health service.
The cash has gone back into the NHS to help provide care and emergency assistance for even more patients.
Services were moved from the former workhouses to revamped facilities in 2007 and the site has since been sold to Landmark Estates by NHS Property Services.
It comes just 10 years after a controversial plan by the now defunct New Forest Primary Care Trust to axe the hospital and treat more people in their own homes.
But the scheme was scrapped after the Daily Echo-backed Save Our Community Hospitals campaign raised a petition signed by more than 40,000 people.
Then in 2007 the hospital was the centre of fresh controversy when the Ford Ward was temporarily closed following complaints about patient care.
As previously reported by the Daily Echo, an independent investigation accused nurses of indulging in “unacceptable behaviour” towards elderly patients. It also cited a “culture of insensitivity” among employees who put their own needs above those of the people they were supposed to be looking after. However, no-one was sacked in the wake of the investigation.
The Grade II-listed Victorian workhouses, which were recently sold, were built in Barton Road in 1885 and became a Public Assistance Institution in the 1930s.
In 1948 it was incorporated into the NHS and was known as Fordingbridge Infirmary.
But in 2007 the hospital was vacated by the NHS in favour of the more practical newly constructed healthcare buildings directly behind the site.
Now it is set to become 15 one and two bedroom homes in a project estimated to be completed by the second quarter of 2016.
These properties will include 11 flats and four single-storey with parking and outside space or access to communal gardens.
NHS Property Services, which is responsible for managing 4,000 NHS buildings worth an estimated £3billion, said as well as boosting services, sale of the site also means the NHS no longer has to foot the bill for maintaining the empty buildings.
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Regional director James Wakeham said: “One of our key roles is to provide strategic estate planning and management advice to NHS trusts and clinical commissioning groups.
“In the case of Fordingbridge, investment was secured by project partners to improve facilities for patients while freeing up a building that was no longer fit for modern healthcare.”