Developers invited to explore proposed redevelopment approach for St Mary’s Hospital
Property developers are being invited to participate in a ‘soft market testing’ process as an early step in the full redevelopment of the St Mary’s Hospital site in Paddington as well as the Western Eye Hospital and the adjacent former Samaritan Free Hospital site in nearby Marylebone.
Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust is undertaking the informal engagement exercise with developers to test our current approach, set out in a high level, indicative ‘masterplan’. It also enables interest in the scheme to be gauged and questions asked to help shape it further and ensure it would be deliverable.
This follows on from phase one plans to develop a new outpatient building on the eastern edge of the St Mary’s site, a planning application for which is being considered by Westminster City Council following extensive engagement and consultation with staff, patients, local communities and stakeholders. The consultation materials also included the current, indicative masterplan.
The wider redevelopment is intended to provide much needed new, high-quality hospital facilities on the St Mary’s site, with complementary commercial and residential ‘mixed use’ developments to help fund the programme. We will be looking to use land that is surplus to our own needs to help fund the costs of the redevelopment, in full or in part.
We have always been clear that our intention is to at least maintain the current capacity of the hospital in new facilities. Services from the Western Eye Hospital are intended to be moved to new facilities on the St Mary’s site. This will require fewer but larger hospital buildings, across a smaller footprint. It is expected that the development costs for the hospital buildings will be around £900m in total.
The Trust will use the findings of the soft marketing testing, a common step for redevelopments of this kind, to help create a strategic outline business case for the whole redevelopment. We will also be engaging further with staff, patients, local communities and other stakeholders to inform the business case. This is the first stage in the process to secure regulatory approval and any investment that is required for the redevelopment. The strategic outline case is due to be completed next spring.
We are working in close partnership with Imperial Health Charity who own parts of the St Mary’s and Western Eye/Samaritan estate, and with Imperial College London who own their own faculty of medicine building within the boundaries of the St Mary’s site. Our regulators, NHS Improvement, are also supportive of our approach.
Deputy Medical Director Dr William Oldfield said: “We are working to develop our wide range of services and specialities to improve quality, increase sustainability and meet changing health needs. This means implementing our clinical strategy - evolving more integrated care models, ensuring the best configuration of services and redeveloping our estates to facilitate modern, high-quality healthcare.
“Overall, much of the St Mary’s estate is very old and is poorly configured for efficient use of space or for modern, high quality healthcare. St Mary’s is intended to develop its role as the main emergency and acute hospital for the area and one of four major trauma centres for London. It is also intended to be a key site for local access to outpatient and integrated care services. A major improvement of the facilities is required to make this possible.”
You can find out more about redevelopment at the Trust here.
