Councillors examine a £3.3m NHS plan for a diagnostic centre on Blacon Parade on 1 October. It would add 6,894 tests a year. What is on and how to speak.

Only one Cheshire West and Chester Council meeting has a published agenda for the week ahead, and it carries a proposal that matters to Blacon. On Thursday 1 October the Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee will look at NHS plans for a Community Diagnostic Centre on Blacon Parade.

Here is what is on, what it means and how to take part.

Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee: Thursday 1 October, 6pm

Where: 1st Floor Committee Room, Ellesmere Port Library, Civic Way, CH65 0BG. The meeting is also webcast. Details are on the meeting’s agenda page.

On the agenda:

  • the Blacon Community Diagnostic Centre
  • NHS winter planning and preparedness for Cheshire West for 2026/27
  • the minutes of the committee’s 15 July meeting

No written report has been published for the winter planning item.

The Blacon diagnostic centre

The plan comes from the Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and NHS Cheshire and Merseyside, the integrated care board. The report to the committee and the trust’s full funding submission set it out.

The centre would fill vacant space in the Parade Enterprise Centre, beside the GP practice and library. The submission says the unit was built by a housing association for community health use, but has stood empty for three years because no funding could be found to fit it out.

The trust’s bid covers these tests:

  • ambulatory monitoring
  • audiology, for children and adults
  • DEXA bone density scans
  • ECGs and echocardiograms (heart scans)
  • blood tests
  • respiratory tests
  • ultrasound, with extra capacity also planned at Ellesmere Port’s existing centre

The numbers in the submission:
Cost £3.3m of Department of Health capital, including £0.2m for the lease
Extra tests about 6,894 a year once fully running
Current backlog about 800 patients across these tests on the six-week waiting measure
Staff on site about 14 a day
Proposed opening April to June 2027, with full activity from July to September 2027

The report says the Countess met the six-week diagnostic standard for 82.5 per cent of patients in May 2026. The aim of the scheme is 99 per cent. It names ultrasound, DEXA, echocardiograms and audiology as the hardest-pressed tests, with some other waits over 30 weeks.

The report also makes the case for Blacon itself. It says 8.1 per cent of residents are in “bad or very bad health”, the second highest rate in Cheshire West. It estimates that 30 to 40 per cent of households in Blacon do not have a car.

What councillors are being asked

The committee is not deciding whether the centre is built. The NHS is asking it to endorse the plan.

It is also asking the committee to agree that this is not a “substantial variation” to services. That matters, because a substantial variation would normally need a public consultation. Some tests now done at the Countess would move to Blacon routinely, and the report says the integrated care board “does not consider this a substantial variation”.

If councillors agree, the NHS can write its letter of support without a consultation.

How to take part

Anyone can watch in person or on the webcast.

Members of the public can speak for up to five minutes, within a 15-minute slot, on items on the agenda. You must register at least two clear working days before the meeting, so by the end of Monday 28 September. The contact details are on the agenda page.

Coming up, agendas not yet published

These meetings are on the council’s calendar but their papers are not out yet:

  • Tuesday 6 October, 4pm: Planning Committee, Ellesmere Port Library
  • Wednesday 7 October, 10.30am: Cheshire and Warrington Combined Authority Board, Leverhulme Stand, Chester Racecourse
  • Wednesday 14 October, 10am: Cabinet
  • Thursday 15 October: a Special Council meeting at 6.30pm, then full Council at 6.45pm

We will cover the planning agenda when it is published. Recent decisions are on our Chester planning news page.

What it means for you

If you live in Blacon, this is the chance to say whether a scan and test centre on the Parade is what the area needs, before the NHS confirms it without a consultation.

If you are waiting for a heart scan, hearing test, bone scan or ultrasound at the Countess, nothing changes yet. The submission proposes opening between April and June 2027.

Sources