NEWPORT might get TWO new hospitals as a result of a shake-up of health services needed to replace the Royal Gwent, pictured.

But nothing is yet guaranteed - and early tensions have surfaced about what is set to be the biggest change in healthcare provision in Gwent since the advent of the NHS.

A Newport Local Health Board discussion on the implications of the Gwent Strategic Investment Plan (SIP) - an emerging blueprint for modernising the area's hospital facilities - hinted that Newport council's aspirations for city hospital facilities might be different to those of health sector planners.

The former Corus plant on Mendalgief Road, known locally as the Whiteheads site, is not officially earmarked as a possible site for a new hospital.

But it was discussed during an exchange by members of Newport Local Health Board on how and where best to provide facilities to replace the Royal Gwent.

"Tempting though it is to look at the Whiteheads site and throw up a 1,200-bed hospital, we must resist that and look at the wider issues," said Dr Stephen Hunter, the trust's medical director and its representative on Newport LHB.

"If a site comes up, without a cost and a plan, you cannot just throw something up.

"The Royal Gwent provides the majority of its services to people who do not live in Newport."

The LHB's chief executive Kate Watkins said: "There is the possibility of two hospitals being built in Newport, a local hospital and a replacement for the acute unit."

She added the SIP offers "a blank sheet of paper on which we can redraw health services."

Graham Bingham, one of Newport council's officer representatives on the LHB, said the council does not entirely come with "a blank sheet of paper" - and warned development opportunities cannot be passed up.

"The masterplan for (Newport's) Urban Regeneration Company is moving fast and therefore, site needs for medical facilities need to be built into it," he said. "As a council, we would be quite strongly in support of a general hospital provision."

Hard details about the type of facility or facilities that would replace the Royal Gwent are not yet available, but greater separation of emergency and planned services is likely.

How this will be done and where facilities will be provided remain to be decided.