The Department of Health and HM Treasury have given the final sign-off for building to start later this month (March) of a new £227 million PFI-funded hospital at Pembury near Tunbridge Wells, Kent, set to be the UK’s first large acute hospital with 100% single in-patient rooms.
Announcement that construction can finally start, following the South East Coast Health Authority’s approval of the business case in February, came in the House of Commons on March 17 from Health Minister Ben Bradshaw in response to a question from Tunbridge Wells MP Greg Clark.
The hospital, which is set to occupy a floor area of 65,000 m², and will be seven storeys high, will incorporate planned and emergency surgery facilities, orthopaedics, a “women and children’s zone”, day case theatres and outpatient services. Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust says the clinical environment will be designed with patient safety and infection control procedures strongly to the fore, with, for instance, each patient bedroom designed to minimise slips trips and slips. The door to each en-suite will be on the same wall as the bed, meaning patients do not have to cross an open floor area to visit the bathroom.
Architects Anshen & Allen, Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust and PFI design and build partners Equion Consortium (comprising John Laing, Laing O’Rourke and Intersperse) say the building’s design will make the most of the hospital’s location, with views over the surrounding woodland landscape a prominent feature. Inpatient and outpatient facilities will also be segregated to “address issues of patient privacy and dignity”.
Overall responsibility for the scheme lies with ceo of the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust as project sponsor, while Graham Goddard is the estates development director and Executive Board lead for the redevelopment project. Lead architect is John Cooper of the London offices of Anshen & Allen.
Darren Yates, communications manager at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust, adds: “One of the key design features of the new hospital will be its ‘integration’ with the surrounding woodland. Many of the rooms will have woodland views, while on some floors patient accommodation will actually be above the tree line.”
Demolition on the lower half of the current split Pembury site is apparently already well under way, while the buildings on the site’s upper level, mainly housing women’s and children’s services, will continue to operate through the construction period. These services, including maternity, paediatrics and ‘mother and baby’, will be among the first to move into the new building.
Darren Yates also confirms that services at the large acute Kent & Sussex Hospital, some two miles away, will continue to run normally throughout the new hospital’s construction, being gradually transferred over to the new facility once it is finished.
