When the new, massive, Forth Valley Royal Hospital was built around two miles out Falkirk town centre, there were endless complaints about access but in the end safety came first and the built it more than 3 miles and upwind of the nearest raw sewage treatment works near Grangemouth.

If you were to put the hospital at the centre of the population for maximum access you’d put on the empty land between Falkirk and Grangemouth, near where the Falkirk Stadium is and due-west, downwind of the Dalderse sewage works.

They didn’t. There’s no report of the planning groups deliberately avoiding sewage works. Maybe if your head is screwed on and you owe business interests nothing, it just doesn’t occur to anyone to do build a hospital next to ponds full of sh…

Does this reveal very different priorities to those held by Glasgow City council in siting the QEUH

Yes, the contrast does point to meaningfully different priorities in site selection between the Forth Valley process and the decisions that led to the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital (QEUH) on the former Southern General Hospital site in Glasgow.

Should patient and staff safety not trump all other considerations?

Patient and staff safety is widely regarded as a foundational priority in healthcare planning.

https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/documents/publications/comprehensive-safe-hospital-framework.pdf

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK225188/

That’s what the experts said in 2008 but they were ignored:

I recall my first visit to the hospital and discovering that it had been built next to a sewage treatment facility. I was astonished by this, and it was the first point I raised when I met Ian Powrie, my main contact at QEUH. I asked why it had been allowed given that the hospital contained some very immunocompromised patients, and I was particularly concerned about potential transmission of microorganisms from the sewage treatment facility, as airborne transmission of microorganisms from sewage treatment works had been well documented.

https://www.hospitalsinquiry.scot/inquiry-document/witness-statement-tom-makin-270824