Regional construction company, I&G, has started work on the new Community Diagnostic Centre on the Seacroft Hospital site in Leeds, which will be run by Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust.
The project will entail refurbishing one of the unoccupied areas of the site, retrofitting it, and adding two extensions, to create a modern healthcare building to house state-of-the-art technology. Once open, the CDC will offer MRI and CT scanning, X-rays, and various tests, saving local people a journey into the city to a large hospital.
I&G has engaged with the Trust’s clinical on the new building’s design, with all end-user teams inputting ‘in a truly collaborative and joined-up way’. A major part of the work will be to improve the thermal efficiency of the old building, upgrading windows and insulation to ensure the centre takes less energy to heat and cool, and reducing its carbon footprint, with a retrofit programme of works that will ‘protect the facility and its users for many years to come’.
I&G managing director, Christopher Carline, said the project would ‘help give the building a new future’. “Working in historic buildings is really rewarding, as through sensitive refurbishment we can bring them back to life, making them more sustainable and fit for the demands of modern healthcare for decades to come,” he said. “Working in the hospital grounds is a challenge, as there are already functioning medical facilities on the site, and we need to carefully plan our work to avoid disrupting patients and staff. However, I&G is experienced in completing complex projects on live hospital sites, so we’re confident we can deliver this exciting scheme and improve health outcomes for patients in Leeds.”
A Trust spokesperson added: “CDCs will improve access and reduce delays for people who need an investigative test. The ambition for these new settings is to separate emergency and urgent diagnostics (delivered within hospital settings) from planned tests by delivering these closer to people’s homes in community ‘one-stop-shop’ settings. The new CDC will enable us to strengthen and expand the delivery of diagnostic services at Seacroft Hospital, which already hosts a number of outpatient services in a community setting. It will complement the existing services, and benefit from the well-established public transport routes at Seacroft Hospital. We are really pleased to be working with I&G to deliver the solution.”
The new CDC is one of four being opened across West Yorkshire, with the others planned for Eccleshill, Huddersfield and Wakefield. Plans are also being developed for further supporting centres in nine other locations.
I&G, part of the wider Sewell Group, is headquartered in West Yorkshire, with additional offices in East Yorkshire, Leeds, and the North East. It specialises in complex construction projects in the health, education, food, and commercial sectors. Recent project successes have included the new Critical Care Unit at Barnsley Hospital, the £6 m refurbishment of the ophthalmology unit at St James’s University Hospital in Leeds, and a food production factory extension in Pontefract for KP Snacks.
