Plans for a new health centre in Oswestry have moved a massive step closer after an application for the scheme was submitted for approval.

Shropshire Primary Care Trust (PCT) wants to convert an historic railway building into the new primary care centre – and a planning application has now been sent in to Oswestry Borough Council.

The proposals, for part of the Cambrian Railways building in Gobowen Road, have been billed as a perfect way to breathe new life into an old industrial building.

As well as a three-storey health centre, complete with a large doctors’ surgery and minor injuries unit, assessment centre and many other facilities, the plan is to convert part of the building into housing.

Drawings by Castlemead Developers and architects Ainsley Gommor show 10 two and three-bedroom apartments included in the overall design.

A report attached to the application says the building, part of the old railway engineering works, is in poor repair.

“It is at risk if an economic use is not found to ensure its future survival,” it says. “Finding a sustainable use to ensure long-term survival of such a large industrial building is a difficult task.”

A PCT spokesman said: “It is in line with a national strategy to modernise the National Health Service, to enable care to be provided closer to patients’ homes and move services, currently based in hospital, to local, primary care settings.”

The primary care centre was to have been built on an adjoining, five-acre piece of former railway land.

But that scheme has been shelved following an application to designate the land as a town green which is now being looked at by Shropshire County Council.