MORE than five acres of land will be sold for use by Royal Bournemouth Hospital after BCP Council’s cabinet approved the latest approach for the Wessex Fields site.

Councillors unanimously agreed on Wednesday to sell one-third of the land to University Hospitals Dorset while also approving a new road linking the A338 and Deansleigh Road.

The council had previously only agreed the sale of a smaller section to accommodate its new pathology laboratory.

But under the plans approved at Wednesday’s cabinet meeting, a strip of the land closest to the hospital will be sold. Sections either side of the Friends of the Elderly care home will be kept.

The council has not made public how much the sale is worth, citing “confidentiality” concerns, but the full 14.6-acre site was bought for £2.25 million in 2017.

A report published ahead of Wednesday’s meeting said the larger plot would facilitate wider expansion of the hospital as part of its partnership with Bournemouth University, including new research facilities.

University Hospitals Dorset is going through the planning process for its multi-million pound redevelopment project.

The deal also allows the construction of a “continuous road” linking the A338 and Deansleigh Road.

This had been put on hold by the previous Unity Alliance administration over concerns it could exacerbate congestion issues in the area.

But councillor Phil Broadhead, whose portfolio covers regeneration, said it had been made “one of the first” priorities for the Conservative administration when it took over in October.

“We’ve got a massive opportunity in the Wessex Fields area to create something really special,” he said at Wednesday’s meeting. “It’s not just about creating a brown industrial park, it’s about utilising the fantastic relationships we’ve got to create a medi-tech science park.”

The council said the remaining nine acres of the site would be “employment land” and that it was “committed” to previous plans for the site, including hundreds of units of NHS employee housing.

Both the deal to sell the land and the construction of the new link road were approved unanimously by its cabinet on Wednesday.

This has been welcomed by Littledown and Iford ward councillor Lawrence Williams who said progress on redevelopment of the land had been “a long time coming”.