Great Western Hospital has been given £15m to create a GP-led urgent treatment centre.

A third of the cash will be paid this financial year with the remaining £10m handed out in 2021/22.

The money is on top of the £30m funding promised by the government in 2018 to enable the hospital to remodel the A&E. When it was opened in 2002, the hospital handled around half of the emergency admissions it currently deals with every year.

GWH chief executive Kevin McNamara said he was delighted by the announced new funding.

"We will use this money to replace the Urgent Care Centre, with a new Urgent Treatment Centre, led by GPs and Advanced Clinical Practitioners," he said.

"The temporary building which houses the Urgent Care Centre (known as the Clover building), will be replaced with a larger building with an area for initial assessments to decide if patients need urgent or emergency care, additional clinic rooms and more space for a socially distanced waiting area.

"We've known for a long time that our hospital is simply too small, which is why we successfully bid for £30 million of funding to expand and improve services as part of our Way Forward Programme, and this additional funding will complement this work.

"We are currently working with national organisations to unlock the funding for the Way Forward Programme, which will be used to integrate and co-locate our urgent and emergency care services, build a new rehabilitation centre, carry out improvements to the services we provide for private patients, and buy the extra land we need to do all of this."

Welcoming the funding, Robert Buckland, South Swindon MP, said: “I will continue to work closely with the GWH Trust and lobby for further government funding for our local NHS here in Swindon.”