NEW housing planned for Basingstoke is “roughly the equivalent to a city the size of Salisbury”.

This is the statement given in a consultation document prepared by Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (HHFT) as it looks to make improvements to the health care services in the area.

HHFT is asking the public for its input before deciding how and where to spend government funds for a new hospital.

The trust lists various challenges it is facing when making decisions, including population growth, partly as a result of new houses being built.

“The NHS is ever-changing – and so are the challenges it faces,” it states, adding: “Our population is growing in two ways. Estimates show that the population served by Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust could increase by 9.6 per cent over the next decade and by 23 per cent between 2018 and 2050.”

However, the population is also aging rapidly, with a predicted growth in the over 75s in Hampshire between 2017 and 2024 being 35 per cent.

HHFT said: “It is well documented that older people require more healthcare. For example, an 85-year-old man requires, on average, seven times more NHS care than a man in his late 30s. This trend in particular is noticeable in Basingstoke as the town expanded rapidly in the 1960s and 1970s and the young families who moved there, then, are now reaching old age.”

The document asks the public to tell the trust what they think about the problems faced by the local health system, and “to consider how we might go about solving them”.

It adds: “Must of this is driven by the fact that the area has changed significantly in recent years – and is set to do so again in the coming decades; with new housing roughly equivalent to a city the size of Salisbury planned in the Basingstoke area alone.”

The population of Basingstoke and Deane is forecast to increase from 173,300 to 190,500 by 2023, according to Hampshire County Council.

A report, commissioned by the council, is expecting the number of people with children (parents or guardians) will increase from 31.8 to 32.6 per 100 people of working age by 2023.

Meanwhile, the number of elderly people will rise too. The forecast shows there will be a rise from 27.1 to 30.6 elderly people for every 100 people of working age by 2023. The authority expects there to be 94.1 elderly people for every 100 children by the same year, showing the town will be growing both in younger and older residents.