We're working with Greater Manchester Police, Northwest Ambulance Service,  local authority colleagues and other key partners to transform our 136 suites.

These are hospital-based places of safety where the police can bring someone needing urgent mental health care and assessment

It's important to consider every possible community-based care option before bringing someone to a 136 suite. This is vital for people’s recovery, ensuring they have a positive experience and maintaining their dignity and liberty.  

For people who do need to be brought to a 136 suite, we want to improve the quality and safety of their care, better meet their needs and those of their carers and family, and ensure more efficient use of resources and professionals’ time and skills.

This work forms part of our ambitious service transformation programme.

We currently provide a 136 suite in each of our five boroughs – Bury, Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale, Oldham, Stockport and Tameside. Each suite is managed and run independently.  

To make sure we can provide a high quality service that meets people's needs, we're investing £3.1m in improving and streamlining our 136 services. The following plans are based on reccomendations from an external review, which considered lots of feedback and data. 

The changes will be rolled out in a phased approach over the next few months to minimise disruption (see expected timetable below). 

Once the improvement programme is complete, we will provide:

  • Two 136 suites at Tameside Hospital (current suite will be refurbished and a new suite created) 
  • One 136 suite at The Royal Oldham Hospital (current suite will be refurbished) 
  • One 136 suite at Bury’s Fairfield Hospital (current suite will be refurbished) 

A single management structure and dedicated peripatetic team will be established, to allow a joined up approach to running our four 136 suites.

​​​​​​The benefits of the new streamlined approach are:

  • Improved patient care and experience - patients will be assessed more quickly, in a safer and more comfortable environment.
  • Police colleagues will benefit from quicker, safer and more effective handover of patients' care to mental health colleagues. 
  • Police and ambulance colleagues will have ​​​​​​easy access to centralised information about all our 136 suites, ensuring they can take patients to the nearest available suite.
  • The good geographic spread of suites means the closest 136 suite isn't too far, ensuring best use of police and ambulance colleagues’ time. Any additional travel time will be more than made up by faster patient handover. 
  • Mental health colleagues will benefit from opportunities to rotate across different services, helping increase their skills and experience 
  • Better use of tax payers' money

 

The following timetable is subject to change due to circumstances outside of our control.

If we need to make any changes we'll let our key partners know. And we'll send regular reminders about our plans and timetable.

Phase one: 

  • September 2024 – 136 suites at Bury’s Fairfield Hospital and Tameside Hospital temporarily close for refurbishment  
  • December 2024 – 136 suite at Bury’s Fairfield Hospital and two suites at Tameside Hospital re-open

Phase 2: 

  • January 2025 – 136 suite at The Royal Oldham Hospital temporarily close for refurbishment 
  •  April 2025 - 136 suite at The Royal Oldham Hospital re-opens

Phase 3:

  • April 2025 – 136 suite at Stockport’s Stepping Hill and Rochdale’s Birch Hill permanently close 
  • New peripatetic team and single management approach fully established 

If you have any questions please contact TBC (details to be added soon).