A new £9m secure unit for 40 mental health patients is to open in Oxford.

Contracts have been signed for the medium secure unit which will be built behind existing mental health wards at Littlemore Hospital, run by Oxfordshire Mental Healthcare Trust.

Patients at the 13-bed Wallingford Clinic at the Fair Mile Hospital, in Cholsey, will be transferred to the new unit when it is complete, along with the core team of doctors, nurses and other specialists. Fair Mile Hospital - where security has sometimes been a problem - will then close.

The new unit is due to open in autumn 1999 and health chiefs say it will have the level of security and intensive staffing appropriate for the patients. It will also provide more jobs to deal with the extra beds.

There will be 30 beds for mental health patients from Oxfordshire and Berkshire, including criminals referred for treatment by the courts.

The other ten will be for people with learning disabilities, behavioural disorders and high levels of offending. Dr Rob Ferris, consultant forensic psychiatrist based at Fair Mile, said: "Instead of an outdated unit that was never built for the job, we'll have one of the best complexes in the country.

"We'll have more than double the number of beds so far fewer patients will have to be sent away to far flung units. That means they'll have more visits and better support from their families and friends and their care after leaving the medium secure hospital will be far better integrated with local services.

"They'll also be able to come back as out-patients to see staff they know."

The extra beds in Oxford will allow more people to be treated close to home. The shortage of medium secure beds can mean people from Oxfordshire being sent to Yorkshire or Wales at the moment.

The average stay will be eight months, with assessment followed by rehabilitation, and the maximum stay will be two years.

Dr John Morgan, medical director of Oxfordshire Learning Disability NHS Trust, said: "The new ten-bed wing for patients with a learning disability will provide a much needed, high quality clinical service to this group of people from Oxfordshire and Berkshire.

"At the moment they have to be sent to all parts of the UK, miles from their families."

The unit will be the first specialist mental health project in the country to be built with using a private finance initiative.

The initiative means the mental healthcare trust will lease the land at Littlemore to a consortium of Miller Construction, Building and Property - which does catering and laundry, and the British Linen Trust. Once completed, the building will be leased back to the trust which will pay for the lease.

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