WORK is set to begin this year on a much-needed and much-delayed doctors' training school in Newport.

The £8.1m Health Sciences Institute (HSI) will be the centrepiece of medical training facilities in Gwent, and is expected to play a key role in training Wales' doctors of the future

It has now cleared the final planning hurdle at the Assembly almost four years after the then health minister, Jane Hutt, backed the project.

More than 4,500 Wales-based medical students are spending time learning skills in Gwent hospitals this year as part of training placements.

When the HSI is completed in mid-2008, most will spend time studying there.

It will be built on the site of a derelict house in Cardiff Road, close to the entrance to the Royal Gwent Hospital site. The house, which until the early 1990s was used by hospital managers, will be demolished in the summer.

The HSI will include a 180-seat lecture theatre, seminar and tutorial rooms, and a medical library.

Its course through the Assembly's labyrinthine health planning and finance process has been long drawn out because of concerns over whether the project offered value for money.

Following Ms Hutt's endorsement in spring 2002, Gwent Healthcare Trust submitted an outline business case the following April.

The Assembly's capital projects board, which scrutinises proposals for NHS building projects in Wales, did not examine the matter until January 2004, and then ordered an independent review.

Acting on the findings, it ordered the trust to cut between £500,000 and £1m from the original estimate.

The reduction was made but the capital projects board then discovered design changes meant the cost per square metre increased and the project no longer represented value for money.

Instead, the original design, which offered better value, was re-approved.

These machinations, however, led to a price increase of almost £1m due to building industry inflation.

Trust bosses have been frustrated by the delays, as major developments have gone ahead at other medical school sites in Wales, while the number of students spending time at Gwent hospitals has risen.