A NEW £260 million district general hospital is to be built on the site presently occupied by Pembury Hospital, it was revealed today. The target date for its completion is 2010.

An alternative scheme at Knights Park, Tunbridge Wells, proposed by developers Kilmartin Properties, has been rejected by Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott.

He dismissed the firm's planning appeal against Tunbridge Wells Borough Council. The ruling swiftly followed judicial review findings that the council had acted correctly over the issue.

It effectively ends the wrangle over where the new 595-bed hospital, with a 56-bed mental health unit and associated car parking and staff accommodation, should be built.

A planning inquiry was held last summer to consider Kilmartin's argument for locating the hospital - due to replace the existing Pembury and Kent and Sussex hospitals - at Knights Park.

But the inspector found the scheme "conflicted substantially" with the 1996 development plan and would be "inappropriate development" in the Green Belt.

His report was called in by Mr Prescott, who agreed there was an urgent need for the new hospital and found nothing on planning grounds to justify approving Kilmartin's proposals.

James Lee, chairman of the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust, whose plans for a new hospital at Pembury won approval in August 2002, was delighted.

He said: "The Trust is already well advanced with its plans for the Pembury site. We are now free to go full steam ahead to open a new hospital there by 2010."

Bruce Cova, local spokesman for Kilmartin, said: "We are obviously very disappointed.

"Although we've not had the opportunity to fully discuss the Deputy Prime Minister's judgement, I would guess that this is the end of the story and it would be extremely unlikely that we would go any further.

"Our thanks go to the many thousands of people in the Tunbridge Wells area who have supported us and who are no doubt as disappointed as we are with this decision."