The Department for Health and Social Care announced last year that it is funding 13 new Community Diagnostic Centres (CDCs) – including one in the centre of Nottingham, to help reduce the backlog of patients waiting for diagnostic tests. Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust has been working closely with colleagues at Nottingham City Council, who it will be leasing the building from, and now has an initial agreement to proceed with the £25 million NHS facility.
The Broad Marsh regeneration has already seen the development of a new Central Library, car park, and bus station, and a new Nottingham College city hub, and has ‘transformed’ streets and public spaces in the area by increasing footfall, particularly supporting businesses on Lister Gate’.
When the CDC opens in Spring 2025, it will provide an additional 100,000 diagnostic appointments each year, and once at full capacity, over 140,000 appointments annually, which will be available to patients through hospital consultants initially, and eventually also via GPs. To help address the immediate backlog of diagnostics tests before the permanent CDC is open, temporary community diagnostics tests have been available behind NEMS Platform One near Nottingham Railway Station since December 2023.
Paul Matthew, Chief Financial Officer at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, said:
“We are delighted we can now share the news that our excellent, highly skilled, and dedicated NUH staff will be running the future CDC facility in Nottingham city centre, which will help to change the lives of so many of our patients for the better. This centre will be vital in reducing the number of people in Nottingham and Nottinghamshire waiting too long for diagnostic tests so they can then either have peace of mind they deserve, or can begin any treatment required sooner. It will also enable patients to access these tests without needing to travel to a hospital.”
In addition, the CDC will create 75 new jobs in Nottingham across a range of disciplines – including consultant radiologists, radiographers, imaging assistants, physiologists and administrators. When the unit is at full capacity it will employ 135 staff. Planning applications and formal contracts will now be drawn up to enable this important new NHS centre to progress.
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. Backed by £2.3 billion in government funding, the national programme of CDCs is part of the NHS Long Term Plan to provide patients with diagnostic care nearer to home without the need to attend acute hospital sites. The DHS says that nationally, CDCs aim to improve population health outcomes and efficiency, reduce cancer waiting times and health inequalities, and help address the elective backlog recovery exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Based in convenient locations such as shopping centres and football stadia, the CDCs have already delivered an additional six million tests, checks, and scans.
Nottingham City Council Leader, Cllr David Mellen, said: “This is another major step forward in the transformation of the Broad Marsh area that has been taking place over the last couple of years. Following the opening of the new Central Library ,and with work underway on the new Green Heart city centre park, we’re really pleased to be able to announce with Nottingham University Hospitals that this fantastic new health facility will also be located at Broad Marsh.
“When the shopping centre closed following the collapse of intu, we said we wanted to see something different for Broad Marsh, not another shopping centre. This was underlined by the feedback we received from local people as part of the ‘Big Conversation’ engagement exercise – the largest the council had ever undertaken. The Community Diagnostic Centre is exactly the kind of facility everyone wants to see at Broad Marsh. It will provide a boost for businesses and jobs locally by increasing footfall. By reusing part of the frame of the old shopping centre, as proposed in the Broad Marsh vision, the building will support the city’s ambitions to be carbon-neutral by 2028. It will also help address some of the significant health issues and inequalities Nottingham faces as a city.”