SWINDON is edging closer to getting its very own radiotherapy unit after Swindon Council granted planning permission to build the £14.7m project at the Great Western Hospital.

Approval for the unit – which will be run by the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust – was granted on Thursday morning, and is the latest milestone for campaigners who have been fighting for years to bring a dedicated unit to the town.

Paul Brennan, director of clinical services at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust, said: “We are delighted to have passed this milestone in our aim to bring radiotherapy services nearer to home for people living in the Swindon area.

“We are pleased to be building a local unit so that fewer patients will need to travel to Oxford for their treatment.”

Currently, cancer patients in and around Swindon have to travel up to 90 minutes each way to Oxford to use one of five machines available, which is far more travel time than the maximum 45 minutes recommended by the National Radiotherapy Advisory Group.

Patients from Swindon and Wiltshire make on average 13,000 trips to Churchill Hospital’s radiotherapy department and spend nearly 20,000 hours travelling for the treatment each year.

One of the patients currently undergoing radiotherapy treatment is 79-year-old Eric Spencer, who was left stranded at Churchill Hospital earlier this month when his transport failed to collect him to bring him home.

The lung cancer patient of Dawlish Road expected to be picked up after his radiotherapy session by the non-emergency patient transport, run by Arriva, at 3.30pm on October 9 but wasn’t collected until 6.45pm.

He said that a radiotherapy unit at the GWH would have prevented the worry that being stranded so far from home had caused.

He said: “It’s great news. The hospital should have had a unit built years ago, I think. It’s at least a two hour round trip just for 10 minutes of treatment, and that’s if there isn’t any traffic.

“It’s very tiring for me. When I do eventually get home I just fall straight asleep.

“It’s definitely something Swindon needs. There are so many people here who come from Swindon for treatment.”

The news has also been welcomed by Roy Gobey, who spent 38 consecutive days travelling to and from Oxford last year for radiotherapy for prostate cancer.

The 79-year-old said: “This is great, great news. This town deserves something like this, it’s absolutely cracking.

“It was horrendous travelling to Oxford every day, absolutely horrendous. I was taken by hospital transport which was sometimes a bit of a bone shaker so you felt a bit ill before you’d even had your radiotherapy. And then after, with all the travelling as well, I just felt so tired. That by-pass to Oxford is just horrible, and even worse if there is roadworks.

“This is just brilliant news for Swindon, it is a massive positive. It will benefit patients 100 per cent and will make things a lot easier. It will help with their fatigue and tiredness.”

Plans for the single-storey unit, which would eventually be part of a larger cancer centre, include an internal courtyard to allow natural light to filter through the building and make the setting as reassuring, welcoming and calming as possible for patients, 24 parking spaces and five dedicated disabled bays.

In the application, Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust said: “The Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust has considered the demand for services in relation to future-proofing and overall site masterplanning to ensure the likely demographic has adequate access provision in relation to local transportation and infrastructure.

“As part of this plan for the future the Trust have worked closely with Great Western Hospitals NHS Trust to develop the design for a new Satellite Radiotherapy Unit on the Great Western Hospital site to allow these vital services to be brought closer to the patients of the Swindon area who currently have to travel considerable distance to Oxford for radiotherapy treatment.”