Another £1.5m could go on white elephant health centre
BUILDING NHS CAN’T AFFORD SET TO BE OFFICES
ANOTHER £1.5m could be spent turning part of a brand new health centre into OFFICE space because the NHS services it was originally intended for can’t afford the rent. As previously reported, the Altrincham Health and Wellbeing Centre - planned as a new health hub for south Trafford - cost £24m to build, before health chiefs then discovered local GP practices and other services were unwilling to move in.
Tenants such as St John’s Medical Centre, Greater Manchester Health NHS Trust, Pennine Community Services and Barrington medical centre had been lined up to take up tenancies last autumn, while there would also have been a minor surgery suite and a heart failure clinic.
But concerns over the amount of rent meant that those NHS services never moved in - and to date the only organisation currently operating in the hub is a library.
In the meantime, the NHS has had to pay around £2.35m in annual running costs, even though not a single patient has so far used the centre.
Now Trafford’s clinical commissioning group (CCG) is recommending another £1.5m is spent converting the third floor into commercial office space in order to offset that recurrent bill.
Some GP and other health services would then occupy the ground, first and second floors, on the proviso that their rent would be no higher than at present, although as yet not all of those tenants have been identified.
Trafford CCG does not know where the money for the office conversion will come from, however.
An independent review into the saga has been launched to uncover what went wrong and is due to be published ‘imminently.’
In the meantime, a report due to be discussed by the governing body of the TCCG on Monday states that the health organisations originally set to move into the facility no longer want to - and, as a result, no tenancy agreements had been signed.
As a result the original business case is ‘no longer valid.’
The recommendation to convert the third floor of the property into commercial office space will therefore be considered.
Demand exists for such space, says the report.
However, it adds: “At the time of writing this paper no funding source for these costs has been identified.”
Other options outlined in the report include leaving the building entirely empty, but that would leave the NHS paying running costs for no gain whatsoever.