The City Council is to spend £16,000 on a public relations blitz to persuade Coventry’s citizens that the new regional hospital should be built in the city centre rather than at Walsgrave.

Councillor Arthur Waugh, deputy leader of the council, has announced that leaflets will drop through the letterboxes of 126,000 houses on 8 & 9 February.

Residents will be asked to return a prepaid card that says that the best site for the new hospital is on the current Coventry & Warwickshire Hospital site in the city centre.

Coventry University will also conduct an opinion poll on the 8 & 9 February and in addition councillors and volunteers will be visiting public houses, clubs and community centres collecting signatures on a massive petition which will be sent up to the Government.

They will also get their message across by advertising on buses.

It will be one of the largest PR exercises ever undertaken on a single project in the city and Councillor Waugh said:

"Public opinion will decide where the new hospital will be built. The decision will be the Secretary of State’s and he will be swayed by public opinion.

"Our stance is simple. First and foremost we want Coventry to have the new regional hospital, and after that our clear preference is for it to be built in the city centre.

"It would make a major contribution to the economic regeneration of the city centre and would bring new jobs."

"But if the minister decides the new hospital should be built at Walsgrave, the city council will swing its full weight behind that decision."

He stressed that the council’s stance was not on party political lines and referred to endorsements in the leaflet from notable Conservative Party leaders.

Councillor Waugh was also critical of Walsgrave Hospital Trust’s outline plan that they intended to build the new hospital partly on a flood plain adjacent to the existing general hospital.

"The flood plain extends a long way across the eastern side of the city and a golf course there has been flooded since December. The environment ministry has already said that it would not grant permission for a hospital to be built on a flood plain.

"Another difficulty is that they propose to build at the rear of the present hospital which means that construction vehicles would have to pass through the site many times a day.

"The Coventry & Warwickshire site has planning permission, but Walsgrave has not. We do not know whether major concerns about the flood plain and access have been embraced in the pounds and pence of the Walsgrave proposals. They may have been, but we do not know.

"We know there will be a lessening of the service to the public during the interim period of building the hospital on either site, but we have to look at the big picture."