Sherry Ebanks and Dorian Ransome of the new Bourn Hall IVF Clinic at Wymondham. Photograph Simon Parker

A new state-of-the-art fertility clinic has opened its doors in Wymondham, which is set to reduce the stress and travel for IVF patients in Norfolk.

Officials from the Bourn Hall Clinic welcomed its first consultations this week after spending 12 months transforming an empty new-build on a business park into a modern IVF treatment facility.

The new clinic is Norfolk’s first one-stop-shop for fertility treatment and will be open to NHS and private patients.

The new Bourn Hall facility on the Gateway 11 business park in Wymondham will mean women from Norfolk can get their IVF treatment under one roof. It could see the arrival of its first IVF babies by Christmas after seeing its first patients on Monday.

The investment means that IVF patients will not need to travel out of the county for part of their treatment and the centre is set to be fully operational next month, once it receives a licence from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority.

Officials at the new site, which is set to employ 15 people, said the James Paget University Hospital in Gorleston and the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King’s Lynn were able collect women’s eggs. However, the fertilisation and rest of the treatment had to be done at clinics in Cambridge or London.

Dorian Ransome, clinic manager, said they looked at a number of different sites in Norfolk and the new unit next to the A11 was ideal for creating consulting and recovery rooms on the first floor and treatment and labs for the scientific work on the ground floor.

“We have been working really closely with the NHS hospitals and there was an unmet demand for patients in Norfolk and Suffolk. This removes the stress of having one part of the treatment in one area and travelling to London or Cambridge for another part of the treatment,” he said.

The private company was founded by IVF pioneers Patrick Steptoe and Robert Edwards following the birth of the world’s first ‘test tube’ baby Louise Brown in 1978.

More than 12,000 Bourn Hall Clinic IVF babies have been born over the last 35 years and over 1,000 babies have been born as a result of NHS-funded treatment at Bourn Hall Clinics since 2009.