Work has started to extend and rebuild Southend Hospital's accident and emergency department.
The £3.2 million improvement programme will provide facilities including a much more spacious observation ward and a new look main department to deal with the current rate of almost 70,000 attendances a year.
The hospital's director of facilities, Paul Kingsmore commented: "The plan is to completely modernise our accident and emergency department. The work will take a year to complete and we realise this will cause some inconvenience to patients, visitors and staff, although we are confident that the improved facilities will be worth the wait."
He added: "We are concerned about the additional pressure on our car parking capacity whilst the main construction work is under way. We are asking everyone who needs to come along to the hospital to use alternative methods of transport wherever possible and we offer our apologies if people are inconvenienced."
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