EXCITING plans for a new flagship RSPCA hospital and rescue centre near Birmingham are being revealed today.

The city has been chosen to be the home of the first national RSPCA centre in the history of the animal charity.

It will be built on a 42,000 sq ft of farmland in Frankley and become the only such centre in the country to have both a hospital and re-homing centre next to each other.

But the RSPCA needs to raise £3 million to ensure the premises can open and has appealed to everyone in the West Midlands to become involved in supporting the project through its new Leaps and Bounds Appeal.

And the Birmingham Mail, as its official media partner, wants its army of readers to get behind the scheme, either by donating or taking part in fund-raising schemes.

In the coming weeks the Mail will be reporting how you can get involved and back the campaign which will ultimately see thousands of abandoned and seriously ill animals being re-homed.

The RSPCA spokesman is ex-Coronation Street star Adam Rickitt who has taken time out of his career to work on the appeal.

The actor, who played Nick Tilsley in the soap, said: “This new development is going to be the beating heart of the RSPCA.

“It will be the only facility in the whole country to have both a hospital and re-homing centre.

“Rescue and hospital treatment and then rehabilitation and finally re-homing – that entire cycle the RSPCA stands for – it will be the only place that can do it in one setting. The people of Birmingham should be really excited about being chosen for the site of the first ever flagship RSPCA centre.”

Its current hospital and re-homing centre in Barnes Hill was built on an old landfill site.

Opened in 1962, it is in such a poor state that some of the rundown buildings there have begun to subside.

Manager Jackie Lines said some of the cracks in the walls are so big you can put your arm through them.

It has also been targeted by burglars

Grandmother Mrs Lines, said the new centre would mean staff could look after the animals without worrying about their surroundings.

“We’re actually going to have the room and the facilities to concentrate on the animals rather than holding the site together,” she said.

“We will have everything that we need up there to do the job. It’s very much make do and mend here.”

Of the break-ins, she said: “We don’t have anything big and expensive in what we do.

“The dogs had radios in their blocks to give them background sound.

“The radios have disappeared and just anything that was lying about. Anything that they would find they would take – even grooming equipment.”