Newmarket Hospital: £25m Endoscopy Unit Nears Build Start

West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust has filed the last set of paperwork it needs before building can begin on a £25 million endoscopy unit at Newmarket Community Hospital, about 14 miles west of Bury St Edmunds.

The application to discharge three pre-commencement conditions reached West Suffolk Council on 2 September 2026 and is pending consideration. Those three conditions are the ones the council attached specifically to stop work starting before they are settled, so signing them off is the step immediately before contractors arrive on Exning Road (DCON(A)/25/2037).

A second application, lodged five days earlier, would change the look of the building’s main front. That one is open for public comment until 2 October.

What is being built

The trust won permission on 8 May 2026 for a two-storey building in the grounds of the existing hospital, north-west of the main site. It is an expansion of the Community Diagnostic Centre next door, which opened in December 2024.

The council’s officer report sets out what goes inside:

• a four-room endoscopy unit on the ground floor
• children’s audiology units on the first floor, with staff welfare areas and internal plant storage
• a separate manifold and vacuum plant building, and an electricity sub-station
• cycle storage for 20 bikes, six electric vehicle charging points, and roof-mounted solar panels

The building is 69.4 metres by 24.6 metres at its widest, with a ridge height of 9.8 metres. From the north-west it will read as 7.7 metres because the ground drops away. The materials approved in May were buff brick and basalt grey aluminium (officer report, DC/25/2037/FUL).

Morgan Sindall Construction, which built the diagnostic centre, was appointed in December 2025 to deliver the £15 million construction phase of the £25 million scheme. The contractor puts the building at 2,300 square metres and says it will hold four endoscopy rooms, 16 pre- and post-procedure preparation rooms, two audiology suites and two training rooms, with completion by the end of 2027 (Morgan Sindall Construction).

Why endoscopy, and why here

Endoscopy is the camera test used to look inside the gullet, stomach and bowel. It is how bowel and stomach cancers get found, and it is one of the tests where a wait has a direct clinical cost.

The trust publishes its own diagnostic waiting times. The endoscopy figures, last updated on 14 July 2026, were:

Those are the waits the new unit is meant to bring down (West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust).

The trust’s case, and the contractor’s, is that treating Newmarket patients in Newmarket takes load off West Suffolk Hospital in Bury St Edmunds and cuts travel for people in the west of the district.

The design has changed twice since permission, and cost is the reason

The scheme approved in May is not quite the scheme that will be built.

A non-material amendment was granted on 30 July 2026, covering external materials, fenestration, a rooftop stepover stair and rainwater pipes. The council recorded that the changes came out of a value engineering exercise and did not alter the use, scale, height, footprint or massing.

Then on 28 August the trust’s planning agent submitted a full section 73 application to vary condition 2, the condition that ties the build to the approved drawings. Its covering letter is blunt about why. Following the appointment of a contractor, a value engineering review was carried out, and the changes “are required to ensure the project remains cost effective for WSNFT, and the Trust is able to fulfil its obligation to expend public finances efficiently and responsibly”.

The most visible change is to the south-east face, the entrance elevation looking at the main hospital. Recessed brickwork is dropped in favour of a basalt grey powder-coated aluminium curtain walling system, chosen to match the window frames and louvres on the diagnostic centre next door. Elsewhere the application would:

• swap the manifold room for a vacuum plant room
• add mechanical intake and extract roof boxes, set inboard of the parapet
• add a retractable escape ladder on the north-east elevation and omit the roof access hatch
• infill an external door and guard rail on the south-west elevation with matching brickwork
• add integrated bat and bird boxes to the facades, on the ecologist’s recommendation
• remove three proposed trees from the landscaping, one over underground services and two in the north-west corner where existing root protection areas make planting difficult

The application fee was £2,167. Comments close on 2 October 2026 and the council’s determination deadline is 6 November 2026 (DC/26/1323/VAR).

What it means for you

• If you live near the hospital, the construction hours are already fixed. Condition 3 allows preparatory, non-noisy work and deliveries from 7.30am to 6pm Monday to Friday and 8am to 1pm on Saturdays. All other building work, including removing spoil, is 8am to 6pm weekdays and 8am to 1pm Saturdays. Nothing at all on Sundays or bank holidays.
• Plant noise is capped, and the limits name your street. Condition 6 sets a rating level of 46 dB during the day and 37 dB at night measured at the nearest sensitive properties in Heasman Close and at White Lodge.
• You can still comment on the redesign until 2 October. Search DC/26/1323/VAR on the West Suffolk planning register. The pre-commencement discharge, DCON(A)/25/2037, is not open for comment.
• Nothing here changes when the unit opens. The contractor’s published date is the end of 2027, and the permission itself only requires work to begin within three years of 8 May 2026.
• If you are waiting for a test now, the wait is unchanged. The figures above are the trust’s own, and they describe the service as it runs today at West Suffolk Hospital.

There is more on planning applications in Bury St Edmunds, and on roadworks and travel if you are driving over from the Bury side.