The Cumberland Infirmary opened in April 2000

The �87m Cumberland Infirmary was the first in the UK to be built under the government's controversial Private Finance Initiative (PFI) in 2000.

But the hospital has come in for criticism for being consistently overcrowded.

Some patients have had to be turned away because all 444 beds have been occupied.

It has also been plagued by reports of blocked pipes which spewed out waste into sinks, and flooding in the maternity unit.

Patients have also complained about overheating in the atrium - a centrepiece of the hospital. On one occasion, temperatures reached 110 degrees Fahrenheit in the hospital.

Now the hospital's new chief executive Marie Burnham has conceded that critics of the hospital were right, and a new extension must be considered.

She did not rule out adapting a former tower block, which was vacated when the new hospital was built.

In October 2001 a cancer specialist at the Carlisle hospital claimed that crowded wards were a danger to patients.

Dr Paul Dyson said it was too difficult to wheel in resuscitation equipment because beds were too close together.