A PROPOSED 15-bed inpatient unit in Newport for St David’s Hospice Care will cost £5 million – and it will go ahead only when funding has been secured, said the organisation’s chief executive.

Planning permission for the unit – earmarked to be built next to, and with a direct link to, the hospice’s existing headquarters on Blackett Avenue, Malpas – was granted by Newport City Council’s planning committee on Wednesday.

The committee’s decision was welcomed by St David’s Hospice Care boss Emma Saysell as “a positive move for hospice care in Gwent”.

The unit will enable day and inpatient hospice care to be provided on one extended site, with its hospice at home services run from there too.

But Mrs Saysell stressed that nothing will happen until the money to fund it has been raised.

“We are in the process of going out to various funding bodies in the hope that we can gain the necessary funding,” she said.

She declined to put a timescale on the project.

She then added: “The next stage only arrives when that funding is in place.”

The Blackett Avenue site, opened three years ago at a cost of £2.9m, provides a day hospice, chemotherapy outreach centre, and administrative base for St David’s Hospice Care, which is the UK’s largest provider of hospice at home care, caring for more than 3,200 patients and families every year, at a cost of more than £7.5m.

It also runs a 10-bed inpatient unit in the grounds of St Joseph’s Hospital, across the A4051 road in another part of Malpas, the former St Anne’s Hospice, which it took over in June 2013.

Mrs Saysell said the intention will be to transfer services from that unit when the proposed unit at Blackett Avenue is ready .

“We continue to provide very high quality inpatient palliative care in our existing unit at the St Joseph’s Hospital site,” she said.

“But it makes sense to be based on one site for a number of reasons.

“From a purely economic perspective, being on one site is more cost effective, and being a single hospice site providing day care and state-of-the-art inpatient care.

“This fantastic building (at Blackett Avenue) has been a huge success, and a single site would be a natural progression.

"The people of Gwent will have an outstanding facility.”

Mrs Saysell stressed too, that St David’s Hospice Care remains “completely committed” to its community care provision, while recognising that on occasion people require an inpatient hospice service.

The organisation – which is working on the new unit project in partnership with Aneurin Bevan University Health Board and Newport council – plays a key role in helping relieve pressure on the acute hospital sector, and the extra beds proposed will help meet demand.