GWENT health bosses hope to secure Welsh Government approval in October on proposals for a Specialist and Critical Care Centre - so they can pay back half a million pounds into an equipment and improvement fund.

And car parking plans for the centre - to treat Gwent's sickest patients - have been altered to protect a rare fungus.

Aneurin Bevan Health Board submitted an outline business case for the 450-bed centre (SCCC) to the Welsh Government last December.

It hoped then that a decision would be made by the end of March, when Welsh Government funding for the planning stages of the SCCC ended.

But a decision on the centre has been postponed until proposals for reorganising key hospital services, through a project called the South Wales Programme, have been confirmed.

Consultation on that programme ended earlier this month. The proposals will be formally announced in September and confirmed by health boards in October.

Only then will the SCCC decision be announced, but since March, the health board has had to use £500,000 of its discretionary capital funding to continue planning work on the centre.

Discretionary capital funding is a budget of around £5.8m a year used by health boards to fund equipment replacement, fire safety, and improvement schemes.

Demands on it far exceed the amount of money available and having to take out £500,000 to keep SCCC planning going has placed further strains on it.

Health board bosses are keen to return the money when, subject to outline business case approval, Welsh Government funding for the SCCC resumes.

"We have gone through all the scrutiny and have a final brief going to the Welsh Government. We are now waiting for the South Wales Programme outcome and hope we are still in a position to have a definitive decision in October," said health board planning director Richard Bowen.

In the meantime a detailed layout 'masterplan' of the SCCC site has been completed, containing several changes to the original plan, not least the repositioning of 40 car parking spaces due to the presence of redcap fungus.

This is a protected species on the former Llanfrechfa Grange Hospital where the SCCC will be built, and cannot be disturbed.

An internal ring road will also now be created around the site, to improve traffic flow, and this has necessitated the relocation of a pathology department, education centre and restaurant.