Look inside Basildon's former Debenhams ahead of health centre transformation
Basildon councillors and MPs including Dame Rebecca Harris, Richard Holden and Mark Francois, have all been given tours of the empty building as bosses explained their plans for the site.
Eerie - inside the empty department store (Image: Dame Rebecca Harris MP)
The former department store, which shut its doors in May 2021, is set to be transformed into a new, modern, health centre which will offer a 24/7 service to support the NHS and private patients.
Empty - the store is completely gutted (Image: Dame Rebecca Harris MP)
Above the health centre, on the top floor, there will be a Fun Parx soft play centre described as a "mini Disneyland" by owner Matt Tofts.
On her recent visit, Conservative Castle Point MP Dame Rebecca said: "I am impressed with the plans and if the NHS contract their services as intended it will mean shorter waiting times for my residents.
Long gone - the old space for Regis (Image: Dame Rebecca Harris MP)
"Before work begins I was invited to tour the completely empty and gutted unit before work begins on fitting the clinics and installing the diagnostic machinery.
"It was fascinating but eerie and in my head I was placing where these wonderful new facilities would be going by the old departments in the store.
Tour - Dame Rebecca was shown around what will soon become a health centre (Image: Dame Rebecca Harris MP)
"The waiting room will roughly be where the perfume counters were and a state of the art digital operating room will soon be on the site of what used to be ladies lingerie!"
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The fact that people still lost weight while on ultra-processed diets indicates that these foods aren't all bad, independent experts said. 'The most interesting result of the study is that participants on both arms lost weight – which contradicts claims that ultra-processed foods result in weight gain,' Gunter Kuhnle, a professor of nutrition and food science at the University of Reading, said in a statement. The findings 'suggest that a diet meeting current dietary recommendations is not detrimental to weight maintenance, whether it is ultra-processed or not,' added Kuhnle, who was not involved with the study. Related Ultra-processed foods account for nearly half of calories eaten by UK toddlers, study finds The study also has some limitations, namely the fact that it included only 55 people who tried both diets. 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