‘Five Step’ approach to repurposing council space

The estate has been identified as a major limiting factor on the ability of the NHS to reduce the current waiting list size of 6.5 million people in England alone. What can we do to provide the right space with so many financial pressures on the public finances as a whole? There are lots of opportunities to create new healthcare facilities in existing buildings, and we need to make sure that the right first steps are taken to ensure unnecessary costs are not incurred.

Repurposing existing local council buildings for healthcare provision undoubtedly has both timeframe and CO2 benefits over new build, but although there is established experience drawing on HM Treasury's The Green Book and NHS guidance on building projects for new-build NHS capital projects, the procedure for repurposing is less clear-cut. Of course, starting any building project requires a significant amount of senior management time, with the early stages in particular often very time-consuming and expensive, when there is considerable uncertainty.

In this article we analyse the benefits of investing in healthcare in the community (why the benefits go beyond reducing elective waiting lists), and set out our methodology for repurposing office/retail for healthcare. All in all, we believe a compelling case exists for investing in healthcare spaces outside of hospitals. Moreover, we have a clear and structured methodology that enables council and NHS executives to repurpose existing retail/ office spaces with reduced risk and lower cost.