Romsey could soon have a new state-of-the-art healthcare centre - as well as new houses and a park-and- walk facility.

Plans have been submitted to Test Valley council for the project in Burma Road, next to Romsey Football Club and the Rapids leisure centre.

The scheme is a joint project between Nightingale Surgery, Abbey Mead Surgery and Wates Homes.

Sara Tiller, spokeswoman for the Eastleigh and Test Valley South Primary Care Trust, said: "Abbey Mead and Nightingale Surgery have both outgrown their buildings and have been looking for new larger premises. They decided this development could be a good opportunity to expand into brand new purpose- built premises with state-of-the-art facili-ties for patients.

"If the application gets the go-ahead obvious-ly they would not move across until every-thing was ready so there would be no disruption to patient care. The old buildings are both owned by the partners so they would be sold."

As part of the development 110 houses - including 30 affordable homes - would be built with parking, while 45 parking spaces would be provided for the medical centre and another 55 for the park-and-walk facility.

The 4.25-hectare site, which is currently partly residential with a caravan site, has long been considered by Test Valley council as ideal for a park-and-walk scheme to ease Romsey's parking shortage problems.

A new access from Burma Road would also be built.

In a report included in the planning application, transport consultants WS Atkins said:

"The proposed development can be accommodated satisfactorily as long as highway improvements are carried out at the Palmerston Street roundabout in order to improve capacity."

But Test Valley councillor Jack Kemish said: "I'm not at all happy with the new access to it. They're hoping to widen the bypass to make two lanes of traffic so there's a right-hand turn into it but it's not a very good entrance."

Romsey Mayor Cheryl Collier said: "I wel-come the idea but the devil is often in the detail and I have not had the opportunity to study the detail yet. I would not like to be certain until I have looked at the impact on neighbours.

"The aims of affordable housing and park-and- walk seem excellent but whether people would park and walk from Burma Road is another matter."