A MAJOR hurdle has been cleared in the fight to get a new hospital built in Otley by the year 2004.

This week the regional health executive approved plans for a new Wharfedale hospital to be built on the present site in Newall Carr Road.

And now health chiefs will search Europe to secure a private partner to fund the new £15 million hospital.

The Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust said yesterday it was about to launch a Europe-wide advertising campaign and hoped the new hospital would be open by the start of 2004.

David Johnson, trust chief executive, said: "The failure to buy the Garnett's mill site was a disappointment but we have demonstrated our commitment to improving healthcare in Wharfedale by quickly and comprehensively re-evaluating the options open to us.

"The NHS Executive has agreed with our assessment that a new hospital on the existing site will meet the healthcare needs of the local population and provide value for money for the people of Leeds and surrounding areas."

Otley Labour MP Harold Best said it was wonderful news and has pledged to press for the early securing of a private backer.

"In my life, if I never achieve anything else other than the successful completion of the hospital, I shall die a happy man," said Mr Best.

Graham Hoult, lay member of the Leeds North-West Primary Care Group (PCG) said: "This is good news. We are still in a long process but you only progress from here with the support of Head Office.

"We now have that support and all that remains now is to find a developer who can take us to the next stage - a full business case with all the costings that will produce a building we can afford to run."

Mr Hoult, who has been involved in campaigning for a new hospital for more than 30 years, added: "This is like clearing Beecher's in the Grand National - a big fence behind us but less in front."

Mr Best, MP for Leeds North-West, said: "During the last five years of my involvement with this campaign, people have written to me from all over, including Yeadon and Horsforth, lobbying for the hospital to be built in Otley.

"I have met people who have been campaigning all their lives.

"There is an amazingly powerful community feeling that it is our hospital. I am absolutely delighted and delighted for all the people of Menston, Otley, Bramhope, Pool, Headingley and all those in the lower Wharfedale area who are going to get this facility."

Councillor Graham Kirkland (Lib Dem, Otley and Wharfedale) said: "It is good news and I definitely welcome it, but this is the easy bit. Now they have got to find the backers and that could take a matter of days or years."

Efforts to secure a Private Finance Initiative (PFI) partner will start this week with an advertisement in the Official Journal of the European Community.

Services at Wharfedale Hospital are expected to continue as normal while work on the new hospital is under way.

It is proposed that the new hospital will pave the way for closer links with primary care across the whole of Wharfedale.

They will include:

l Direct admission for selected medical cases

l Intermediate care

l Day care and short stay surgery facilities

l An expanded range of outpatient clinics

l Improved diagnostic facilities.

It is hoped the flexibility provided by the new hospital, together with the reconfiguration of services across the whole of Leeds, will relieve pressure on the city's acute hospitals during busy times.