THE steering committee for the Great Oaks Forest Hospice project is poised to move forward with a planning application for a site adjacent to Dean Hall School.
A site meeting on November 16 for all the parties so far involved in the project has been called by the Labour leader of Gloucestershire County Council Peter Clarke.
"If the meeting shows the groundswell of opinion is behind them for the Dean Hall site, campaigners will move forward with an outline planning application," the organisers state.
Hospice campaigners have considered several alternatives before opting for an acre of land across the road from Speech House as their preferred choice. The land is a small part of a paddock used for grazing the school's animals and is leased from Forest Enterprise by the Local Education Authority.
The building will cost an estimate £350,000 and will have running costs of around £90,000 a year. Serving a population of some 77,000 its aims are to provide free day care and support to anyone with a life threatening illness – a facility for which some patients have to travel as far as Cheltenham and beyond.
Since fund-raising was launched in March last year more than £200,000 has been collected for the project.
Steering committee treasurer Frank Rainer said he was "amazed and delighted" with the diversity and ingenuity of ideas devised to raise cash.
"People of the Forest have readily and wholeheartedly taken this cause to their hearts and are most generous,"
he said.