RESIDENTS living near Essex County Hospital have been invited to a meeting ahead of its closure.

Services are being gradually moved out of the Lexden Road hospital before it shuts next summer after 195 years.

With the site, which is expected to be turned into a housing development, due to go on the market shortly, residents nearby have been invited to a public meeting at Colchester Royal Grammar School on Thursday, October 23.

There, they will hear more about the future of the site, part of which is listed, and about how services are being moved to Colchester General Hospital and elsewhere. It has also been announced cancer patients staying in Rhys Lewis and Jefferson Wards will be transferred by the ambulance service to Colchester General Hospital on October 22.

They will be moved to West Bergholt ward, previously a general ward which is being refurbished and upgraded.

Most services offered at Essex County are being moved to either Colchester General Hospital or the nearby Colchester Primary Care Centre, although the Contraceptive and Sexual Health Services are moving to the High Street.

The Gazette is supporting a £4.5million appeal to create a cancer centre on top of the new radiotherapy centre at the hospital in Turner Road.

A hospital trust spokesman said it had appointed Colliers International, which is also marketing the former Severalls Hospital site for the North Essex mental health trust, to sell the site.

He said: “We have been working with Colliers since the summer to develop a detailed sales pack which will be available to interested purchasers.

“Feedback from our agents is that this will be a popular site for developers and we are planning to be in a position to have exchanged contracts for the sale by March 2015.