A company specialising in mental health has been given the green light to build a new £18 million hospital in Maidstone.

The 65-bed Cygnet Hospital will form part of the proposed Kent Medical Practice in Bearsted Road.

Outline planning permission for the two-acre site was granted in 2014 and the scheme given the seal of approval by Maidstone Borough Council officers last month.

Kent Medical Campus is intended to become a research hub for medical companies rivalling other centres in Oxford and Cambridge.

The new facility will create 150 new jobs and will sit alongside the £95 million private KIMs Hospital already built on the 30-acre campus site.

Currently Cygnet is the largest provider of outsourced NHS mental health services in the country with 21 centres catering for more than 1,000 inpatients.

Lee Hammon, commercial director at Cygnet Health Care, said: "Cygnet Hospital Maidstone has been developed following extensive feedback from a variety of our NHS customers, and we look forward to refining the service model alongside our customers over the remainder of the year."

Construction is due to begin in September and scheduled to take 65 weeks. The first admissions are expected in January 2018.