WORK on a £15.5m “mini- hospital” in south Liverpool will start in September, after the scheme was given planning permission yesterday.

Councillors approved plans to demolish the existing Sir Alfred Jones Memorial Hospital, in Garston, and replace it with a new treatment centre.

Health bosses said the new building, which features a stainless steel facade, would provide a “new landmark” for the 21st century, providing top- quality care.

But campaigners compared the building to a McDonald’s and said profit was being put before people and heritage.

The centre forms a key part of bigger plans by Liverpool PCT to invest millions into new or refurbished community health centres to enable more care to be delivered outside hospitals.

It will provide south Liverpool residents with walk-in care, minor surgery, dental services, radiology and outpatient clinics among many other services.

Construction of the new building, which is three times the size of the existing hospital, is planned to start in September, with work completed by early 2011.

The treatment centre would be part of a larger south Liverpool healthcare plan, which could also include two controversial “super surgeries” in Allerton and Speke. Critics claim the plans will drain expertise away from the city’s main hospitals and erode the traditional relationship between patient and GP.

And campaign groups such as Keep Our NHS Public are against the prospect of private companies running some services within the new structure, as contracts are put out to tender.

But the PCT say the proposals are in conjunction with plans to ensure residents are no more than 15 minutes’ walk from a practice, and that hospitals will not be weakened.