ALTERNATIVE plans for a new Tunbridge Wells district general hospital to be sited at Knights Park on the town's north-eastern perimeter have failed their first test.

A special meeting last night of a borough council planning committee upheld officers' recommendations that the outline scheme be rejected.

But that decision still has to go before a meeting of the council's planning board on December 3. Even then the final word could still rest with the Secretary of State.

The minister is already considering Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust's own proposals to create a new £282 million, 595 bed hospital with 56 bed mental health unit at Pembury.

This would occupy the existing Pembury Hospital site and combine services currently provided there with those offered by the Kent and Sussex Hospital in Tunbridge Wells town centre.

The scheme has already won the blessing of Tunbridge Wells Borough Council after going through the planning process earlier this year.

But the Kilmartin Property Group, owners of Knights Park and the company behind the alternative scheme, argued that its hospital could be built more quickly, more cheaply and with less disruption.

Knights Park is already home to the Odeon cinema and Bowlplex leisure complexes, and Kilmartin claims it would take 3.5 years to build a hospital there, rather than 5.5 years at Pembury.