WORK starts today on a £3.75 million expansion at the Royal Bolton Hospital.

The development will create a new endoscopy unit and a restaurant for visitors and staff.

The project will mean the department, which specialises in diagnostic tests for the digestive system, double in size.

The department, which cares for patients locally and further afield, will feature four scoping suites and is designed to meet an expected increase in demand.

It will be located in what is currently the visitor and staff restaurant on the first floor, and is expected to open next January.

A spokesman for Bolton NHS Foundation Trust said: "Bolton is responsible for bowel cancer screening not just for local patients, but also those from Wigan and Salford, with many coming here for follow-up endoscopies."

The current restaurant will be closed from today. Hospital chiefs hope to open a new restaurant in the hospital’s current kitchens in October.

In the meantime the staff and visitor restaurant will move for 12 weeks to a 90-seater unit behind the neonatal unit, with food for eating in and taking out.

Work to refurbish the kitchens and move the restaurant will cost in the region of £1 million and Elior – a company which provides catering services for the NHS – is investing in and running the facility. It will also launch a new menu featuring foreign-influenced dishes such as Asian noodles and curries, as well as traditional British food and a selection of salads.

The restaurant will be open from 7am until 7pm and arrangements are being made to offer services elsewhere on the site to visitors and staff out of those hours.

The new endoscopy unit can be accessed from the main corridor near the chaplaincy square. It will operate alongside the current facility which will provide additional day case capacity to help manage winter pressures.

The developments are being overseen by Integrated Facilities Management Bolton, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Bolton's NHS trust.

Its Bolton managing director Stephen Tyldesley said that work was progressing fast.

He added: "Projects like this are a bit like dominoes – one move can bring others. But although there will be a short period of disruption, the end result will be some fantastic improvements for patients, visitors and staff."

The funding for the project has come as part of the £30 million given to trust by the Department of Health for developments to the estate and IT systems.