Ground-breaking in more ways than one

Built on the site of a large area of former car parking at the west of the Churchill Hospital’s sizeable campus in Headington just south of Oxford, the new 35,000 m2 Cancer and Haematology Centre is a PFI-funded £109 m unit designed by Steffian Bradley Architects (SBA) to provide both cancer treatment and surgery to an international standard, building on the reputation of the oncology services which have been offered at the hospital since the 1950s. The earliest buildings on the site were constructed in 1942, initially to house local civilian casualties during the Second World War, with the facilities subsequently used by both the British and American military to treat casualties as the hostilities progressed. The hospital was handed over to the NHS in 1948, and began offering cancer treatment a few years later.

Reputation for excellence

While the existing Churchill Hospital has over the years established what project director for the new Cancer and Haematology Centre Vickie Holcroft describes as “a reputation for excellence” in many types of cancer therapy, as well as for the quality and scope of its R&D (enhanced via its close links with Oxford University), many of the buildings until recently used to house patients undergoing treatment, and laboratories and operating theatres, date back to the hospital’s opening. Vickie Holcroft explains: “Plans for a new oncology treatment centre have been mooted for well over a decade and, shortly after I joined the Trust (the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust) in 2000, the strategic outline case for the new unit was approved. We had originally conceived plans for a slightly smaller facility, but, when it was decided that the centre should offer both cancer surgery and treatment on one site, bringing together services (such as radiology) from the Churchill, but also surgery from the John Radcliffe Hospital a short distance away, a larger scheme evolved that formed the basis of the impressive unit we have today.” Early this Millennium the Government had also, Vickie Holcroft explained, announced ambitious targets and strategies for cancer treatment countrywide in its National Cancer Plan, one key element being the establishment of a network of regional centres offering first-class treatment.