WIGAN and Leigh’s new mental health hospital site has been formally named as Atherleigh Park.

5 Boroughs Partnership NHS Foundation Trust is investing £40 million in the facility which is being built off Atherleigh Way in Leigh.

Formerly Leigh East Amateur Rugby League ground, the site will be split in to two separate buildings providing inpatient services for adults suffering from mental ill health as well as patients with dementia and memory conditions.

Phase one will provide individual en-suite rooms for up to 48 adults, split between male and female wards and a psychiatric intensive care unit.

Phase two will include 42 en-suite rooms for those being cared for by the later life and memory service.

The site will also include facilities to promote physical health and wellbeing, communal areas, a café, landscaped gardens, a nature trail and will also act as a hub for other mental health and community service providers including charities, voluntary groups and housing organisations.

Simon Barber, chief executive of 5 Boroughs Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, said: “Now we have a site name, I intend to hand over responsibility for naming individual wards and other areas within the site to those who will be closest to it — local residents, staff and of course service users."

Inpatients are expected to move to the adults building in autumn, 2016, while the longer life and memory services building in planned to open early 2017.