SWINDON'S hospital chief is in dispute with council planners in a clash over nursing home provision in the town.

Sonia Mills, who heads Swindon and Marlborough NHS Trust, has stood firm behind a plan to create a 79-bed nursing home adjacent to the existing Kingsdown Lodge in Stratton St Margaret despite the fact that planners have recommended the outline scheme for refusal.

In a letter to tonight's planning committee, Miss Mills points out that there is a shortage of such homes in the town and underlines the pressing need for more available beds in nursing homes serving the area. She said: "The difficulties of discharging people from the hospital are often due to lack of appropriate places available in the community.

"This is exacerbated when nursing homes have been closing locally as those residents currently accommodated in those homes obviously have to take first precedence over patients with newly ascertained needs."

The proposed new nursing home would help to ease the growing problem of elderly patients who are well enough to be discharged from hospital, but not sufficiently well to go home.

The problem has been made worse by the closure of a number of nursing homes in the town last year.

A combination of compe-tition from a buoyant jobs market, high house prices and stringent guidelines for nursing homes has meant that owners are having difficulty making a profit.

According to latest figures there were 13 people in beds at Princess Margaret Hospital who were awaiting a vacancy in a nursing home in the town, costing the trust £26,030 a month, and the problem is getting worse.

The new nursing home has received two letters of objection and five letters of support as well as the backing of the parish council.

The outline plan, submitted by the owner of Kingsdown Lodge Philip Page, will be discussed by councillors at the Civic Offices tonight.

It has been turned down twice before by the council, once on highway grounds and most recently in February on planning policy.

A report to the planning committee states that the nursing home would be "an unjustified and inappropriate form of development situated in the open countryside."

This time around agents for the scheme, RPS Chapman Warren, hope that the support Miss Mills and her contention that extra nursing home places are urgently needed will override the established planning guidelines.