ESTATE REDEVELOPMENT
Top: A crane lifts larger beams into place.
Top right: The frame was completed in November 2023, and the new building fully completed and handed over at the end of September 2024.
Bottom right: The original building had been built on waste ground on a vibro raft foundation, through which 196 piles had to be dug, 15 metres deep, and averaging 300 mm diameter in size.
in getting the new facilities built, at the Western Community Hospital in mid-November. The first, Maggie Stoppard, is a highly experienced senior nurse with a specialism in neuro rehabilitation. As the Trust’s head of Inpatient Nursing and Therapy, she manages all four rehabilitation wards at the site – the two in the existing building, and the two new wards. Also attending was Mark Maffey, an experienced architect, senior project manager, and the Project design lead. Alongside Mark was the Trust’s Communications manager for Estates, Liz Pusey. Explaining that the Western Community Hospital
had been built in 1993, Maggie Stoppard said: “With the West Wing’s opening, we now have four rehabilitation wards on the site. The new building houses our two new Level 3 rehabilitation wards, Keats and Conan Doyle, while in the existing building we have Snowdon – our neuro-rehabilitation ward for patients with neurological injuries needing rehabilitation, and Kite – our neuropsychiatric secure ward, housing patients with an acquired brain injury presenting with challenging behaviours. I manage all four, and we work alongside the hospital’s fifth ward, Primrose Ward – which delivers older people’s mental health services.” To make space for the new building, a section at the side and back of the original hospital was demolished. Chris James said: “The scheme is part of a masterplan which recognises that the site has been underutilised. The building we demolished incorporated a decommissioned former single ward repurposed as administrative space.”
How the new wards came about Mark Maffey said: “With two of our four rehabilitation wards – serving 43 patients combined – previously located at the Royal South Hants Hospital, as previous tenants of that facility, we have reduced our rental costs.” Maggie Stoppard went on to explain: “Our
rehabilitation services are split into three levels – as defined by national guidelines. Level 1 patients are the really complex patients in a low awareness state, often characterised by psychiatric or psychological conditions alongside other clinical care needs, while the Level 2 patients in our Snowdon neuro rehabilitation ward have slightly less complex clinical and care needs, but still need some specialist rehabilitation. Level 3 patients are those requiring more ‘general’ rehabilitation – typically having suffered something like a fracture, and needing help to get back on their feet, or recovering after a heart attack or stroke.”
42 Health Estate Journal February 2025
Small cubicles and restricted spaces At the Royal South Hants Hospital, rehabilitation patients were accommodated in one 24-bedded ward and one 19-bedded ward, in a mix of bays and side rooms. Maggie Stoppard said: “The NHS Property Services- owned hospital is very old, with small cubicles and restricted spaces, while only one had a day room, and the bathrooms were shared.” Mark Maffey added: “We were thus paying NHSPS to rent an ageing building, suffering from disinvestment, that no longer met patient needs. In 2017 the Clinical Commissioning Group drew up an initial outline business case to determine how we should address this. Around 10 options were examined, the preferred one being to re-locate our patients to the Western Community Hospital site, in the process eliminating cross-site working. There was a long list of other positive metrics – including lower energy, food, and waste costs per patient, yet in a more spacious, fit-for-purpose environment.” Maggie Stoppard added: “Having the four wards on one site both makes the senior leadership team more visible, and gives me more flexibility in how I deploy my staff.”
A detailed business case completed in late 2020 was
approved in June 2022, with the required funding – a combination of NHS England, Integrated Care Board, and Trust funds, becoming available in September 2022. The total project cost is expected to be around £22 m. Mark Maffey said the full business case needed to be a fully designed and signed-off proposal. He said: “The design process saw our Estates team (on the capital side) lead the design, employing external design teams, and working with the clinical team – right from the ‘blank piece of paper’ stage through to the minute details, such as ‘Where do you want the light switches?’ The design team, the users, and our ‘technical stakeholders’, all contributed. So, we worked with Maggie’s team on the layout, and closely with Chris James in Operational Estates to ensure the new building would be easily maintainable. We also liaised extensively with the leads for cleaning, catering, security, IT, health and safety, fire, and IPC. Once the full design was signed off, the business case process required full market testing, so the scheme was tendered on the open market. It was thus fully ready to mobilise once the business case and funding were approved. Once the funds became available,” Mark Maffey continued, “we appointed the scheme’s preferred construction team, and then started work on site on 31 October 2022.” Brymor Group Southern managed both the demolition
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