AS part of a major boost to facilities, five more consulting rooms, a treatment room and better staff facilities are to be provided at Lydney and District Hospital. Half of the cost is being met from donations made to The Friends of Lydney Hospital.

In a joint statement the NHS and the Friends say the buildings will support a large increase in outpatient services. At present 30 per cent of Forest outpatients are treated locally. The aim is that this should increase to 50 per cent.

Planning permission for the building – described as state-of-the-art modular units – has now been agreed and work will begin this month. New services being planned include more opthalmology clinics, including a low vision service in partnership with The Forge, and a musculo-skeletal treatment service (orthopaedics). It will mean more services locally reducing the need for patients to travel to Gloucester and Cheltenham.

The Friends and the NHS are each contributing £20,000.

NHS Gloucestershire chief executive Jan Stubbings said: "This is a major boost to the hospital and reinforces our commitment to extend the range of services that are provided to patients closer to where they live.

"We want to make sure our local community hospitals continue to have a key role to play in providing highly valued services to local people and we are looking forward to make a number of announcements in the coming weeks to highlight this further.

"We would like to thank The Friends of Lydney and District Hospital for their unwavering commitment to this project and their generous funding support."

Mr Melville Watts, chairman of The Friends, described the work as another landmark project being carried out in partnership with the NHS and local GPs.

"The hospital and its staff has a proud tradition in providing first rate health services in a caring, supportive and professional environment and we are so pleased that even more patients will now benefit from this experience," he said.

Local GP Dr Martin Gibbs, chair of the Forest Commissioning Cluster, described the announcement as wonderful news.

"Much has been done to expand the range of outpatient services available to local patients during the last year and there will be more good news before the end of this financial year," he said.

•NHS Gloucestershire say they hope to make a number of further announcements concerning developments at both Forest of Dean hospitals in the coming weeks.