Located within the existing hospital’s grounds, the new building provides a welcoming, level, and accessible front entrance to the main outpatient facilities. As well as a new entrance and reception area, the accommodation includes meeting rooms, flexible open-plan workspaces, and breakout areas, and consultants’ offices on upper floors, plus areas for their support teams to work in, and a Changing Places facility, while the new ‘Café Bede’ community café is open to the general public, visitors, staff, and service-users across the hospital. With areas for both inside and outside dining, it houses a time capsule placed in the ground during construction; telling the story of the build, and the site and previous building’s history, for people to read in years to come.
Sir Robert McAlpine completed building the 3,287 m2 three-storey building for MDL over 19 months, achieving a Design stage BREEAM ‘Excellent’ standard. In addition to a replacement tree-lined staff car park, there is now level access and a ‘beautifully landscaped’ piazza area, including seating and extensive planting, and a memorial garden.
MDL worked with NTW Solutions Limited, a limited company established by Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust – one of England’s largest mental health and disability Trusts – to provide premises that will enable NTW Solutions to deliver improved facilities and a range of important services to the Trust.