‘Landmark’ plans submitted for £25m NHS centre at Broad Marsh
HEALTH FACILITY WILL GIVE CITY PATIENTS EASIER ACCESS TO TESTS
PLANS for a new £25m facility at the former Broadmarsh Centre have taken a step forward.
Planning documents have been submitted for the NHS’S Community Diagnostic Centre, which will take over a section of the partially-demolished shopping centre off Lister Gate in Nottingham city centre as part of the area’s redevelopment.
Nottingham City Council will now consider the proposals for the facility, which aims to reduce pressure on Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust’s Queen’s Medical Centre and City Hospital - and would be leased from the council by NUH.
Community diagnostic centres were introduced after the pandemic to make tests more easily available, reduce visits to hospitals and reduce patient travel.
Planning documents reiterated the main use of the building would be for clinical facilities, including MRI and CT Scanners, X-ray and Ultrasound, Phlebotomy and Spirometry.
There would also be waiting and changing areas, clean and dirty storage and staff facilities across the building.
A publicly accessible café will be located on the ground floor, the documents outlined.
Architects behind the project said it will have a feature staircase and a waiting area “designed to highlight the existing concrete structure of the old shopping centre”. “This space will be designed to provide a warm and welcoming environment in which patients feel safe and calm in an otherwise clinical environment”, planners Leonard Design Architects added.
The designers further explained it was hoped the centre would form a key piece of architecture for this part of the city centre.
They also expressed NUH’S wish to create a landmark building which was well integrated with the city council’s Green Heart, which is planned to be a wildlife-rich open space with benches, trees, and urban wetlands that sits at the centre of the future plans for Broad Marsh.
The Lister Gate facility will be the second CDC in Nottinghamshire after plans were announced for a centre in Mansfield, to be run by Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
When opened in spring 2025, it would create 75 new jobs in Nottingham across a range of disciplines including consultant radiologists, radiographers, imaging assistants, physiologists, and administrators.
When the centre is at full capacity it will employ 135 staff, NUH previously said. The building will play a part in the ongoing regeneration of the Broad Marsh area, which has to this point included the new Central Library, car park and bus station, and the remodelling of streets and public spaces.