Sir,. – I refer to your leading article about public buildings – “Tawdry times” (D&S, April 16) .

Perhaps the D&S Times should seek nominations for the worst new public buildings in the North-East? My candidate for this “concrete turkey” award is the new Victoria wing of the RVI Hospital, Newcastle. Some of your readers will have been referred there for treatment.

The new Victoria wing looks, and is apparently designed to function as, a cross between an out-of-town shopping mall and a multiplex cinema.

The greatest prominence in the sprawling and cavernous lower floors is given to a large arcade-type shop for purchasing knick-knacks and fizzy drinks, and a pseudo-continental cafeteria cum fast food outlet where you can spend your pounds, though not your pennies, as there are no nearby toilet facilities.

Hospital out-patients appear not to have been considered at all in the design. In-patients may fare better. The outpatients clinics – if you can locate them amid a sea of confusing signage – are bundled away at the sides of the lower floor with cramped and crowded waiting areas furnished with an inadequate supply of uncomfortable seating.

The architects clearly haven’t considered the size of some patients, nor that some patients bring at least three family members with them to chaperone and interpret for them and so on, and thus take up four or more seats, not just one.

I had to abandon my appointment to see a consultant after an hour’s unexplained and unapologised-for delay. The discomfort became intolerable.

In short, the new Victoria wing at the Infirmary is just the kind of ugly glass, concrete and plastic monstrosity your editor is concerned about, and hardly fit for purpose as far as any outpatient is concerned.

Hopefully, it will fall to bits as fast as it has been put up, leaving just the over-priced multistorey car parking facility for patients to negotiate in their forlorn quest for timely treatment.

RICHARD MASCALL Spennithorne Leyburn