IMAGES from inside North Staffordshire's £400 million super-hospital have been revealed publicly for the first time.

After years of planning and talks, the skeleton of the six-storey building is now complete.

But from the maze of concrete pillars and miles of cables, it is still hard to visualise how the finished product will transform specialist healthcare in the Potteries in two years.

Most of the structure, which dwarfs the City General, will resemble a building site for some months.

But it is now a building site with the structure's skeleton complete and most of the roof in place.

Main contractors Laing O'Rourke gave The Sentinel the first public glimpse inside the centre.

The 500 construction workers and tradesman currently crawling over the building will be replaced by thousands of patients from the autumn of 2011.

By the following year, its 14 theatres, dozens of wards with almost 1,000 beds, X-ray machines and a state-of-the-art accident and emergency unit will be operating.

The amount of concrete poured on site to date could fill eight Olympic-sized swimming pools.

The site's floor area would cover 10 international football pitches and the plasterboard partitions would reach Uttoxeter if placed in a straight line.

Meanwhile, the amount of copper pipe used would stretch to Anglesey or York.

Because it cuts into sloping land, the centre rises just three stories from the A34.

But the wards are spread over six floors, with the theatres, diagnostic equipment and treatment hub filling four levels, all joined by 22 lifts.

Miles of air-powered tubes will be used to shoot samples and drugs between departments.

An atrium at the main entrance has yet to appear, but the curved lines of the separate children's entrance and department are now in place.

The casualty unit is also there and will be joined by a bridge to an emergency helipad where the most severely injured patients will be brought.

Meanwhile, rubble from this summer's demolition of the old maternity unit has been crushed and used in the foundations for the new hospital.

Ten years ago officials put forward the proposals for the centre.

Their case was based on the inefficiencies caused by the split sites of the City General and Royal Infirmary.

About 19,000 ambulance journeys a year are needed between the two.

But when the super-hospital opens, patients will instead be wheeled a few yards on trolleys.

At the moment four cranes are visible from 10 miles away.

The base of one is surrounded by wards and theatres and will soon have to be hauled out by a bigger crane.

Three hospital units have already opened in North Staffordshire this year at a cost of almost £100 million.

But the cancer and maternity centres, together with the redeveloped Haywood in Burslem, are just the start.

The theatres and some wards are due to be handed over to the University Hospital of North Staffordshire Trust in September, 2011.

Accident and emergency should be signed off the following January and then the whole centre is due to be ready in June, 2012.

Planning manager Mike Lacey said: "Trying to keep disturbance felt by the existing hospital to a minimum is a top priority.

"We are slightly ahead of schedule and are now working mostly in the dry as we deliver the local population a hospital we are sure they will be proud of."