Work to strip out office areas on the fourth floor at Peterborough City Hospital will begin today (January 29).

The work marks the first step towards creating two new inpatient wards to help care for more patients and cut waiting times.

The wards, which will contain 72 extra beds in total, are expected to be ready for next winter.

The Trust has been awarded £12.5m from a national funding initiative to convert office space that was used by administration teams and some clinical staff.

Visitors to the hospital will see some changes to the front of the site while a compound is created between the main entrance and Emergency Department, where waste from the strip-out of offices will be transferred via a temporary external goods lift.

David Moss, director of estates and facilities, said: “We’ve planned this project to ensure minimal disruption to patients, visitors and staff, but we would ask people to bear with us while this work is taking place.

“We do not expect any impact on traffic, but we have created some additional blue badge parking nearby to ensure disabled patients and visitors can still access the hospital via the shortest possible route.

“I would like to take this opportunity to thank our administration and clinical teams for their support with this important project. They have relocated from their former offices on the fourth floor and are now working in a more agile way across our hospital sites and at home.”