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A plan to transform and modernise buildings and services at a hospital in Taunton has reached a “major milestone”, according to the team behind the project.

Main construction work on Musgrove Park Hospital’s new acute assessment hub, which will include a three-storey building for the therapies department, has now started. It is expected to be up and running in early 2022.

Somerset NHS Foundation Trust, which runs Musgrove and the county's 12 community hospitals, was awarded nearly £91million by the Treasury in 2018 to fund improvements to its facilities, according to .

Of this, just over £11.5million will be spent on the new accute assessment hub, with the remaining £79.4million going towards the new surgical centre elsewhere on the site.

Architecture and engineering practice BDP is designing the acute assessment centre, which will be built by contractor Kier.

The trust's modernisation plan for the hospital - known as Musgrove 2030 - also includes a new maternity and children's building and further development of its cancer and emergency services.

Dr Matthew Hayman, Somerset NHS Foundation Trust's deputy chief medical officer, said: "I am very proud of the quality of care that my colleagues provide to our patients at Musgrove Park Hospital but some of these hospital services are housed in facilities that were built in the 1940s and are simply not good enough.

"We are very excited by the improvements we can make to the care we provide and to our patients' experience by planning and building modern state-of-the-art facilities."