🏥 Rebecca has visited the location for a new health centre in the old Debenhams Superstore at Eastgate in Basildon.

When finished it will provide 24/7 service to support NHS and private patients with a range of services from diagnostics to musculoskeletal therapy.

It will occupy three floors of the old department store, equipped with MRI machines, CT scanners, X-ray machines and ultrasound equipment. As well as having the equipment, it will also offer day and outpatient services and overnight hospital rooms.

After the visit, Rebecca commented: "I am impressed with the plans. If the NHS contract their services as intended it will mean shorter waiting times for my residents. Before the work begins I was invited to tour the completely empty and gutted unit before installation of the clinics and diagnostic machinery.

"It was fascinating but eerie and in my head I was placing where these wonderful new facilities would be going by the old departments in the store. The waiting room will be roughly where the perfume counters were, and a state of the art digital operating room will soon be on the site of what used to be ladies lingerie!"