Published on: 4th October 2021
We have submitted funding bids totalling £220m to the Government to build two world class mental health super centres.
We’ve requested £130m to build a centre in Stockport or Tameside (location to be confirmed); this will be known as the South Manchester campus.
We’ve also submitted a £90m bid to build a new centre on the site of Bury’s Fairfield Hospital. This would involve potentially purchasing around two acres of land from the Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust and making use of buildings they no longer require.
The new centres would allow us to bring together lots of different services into world class, modern facilities.
The Government has committed to build 40 new facilities as part of their £3.7bn health infrastructure plan (also known as the new hospitals’ programme). They’ve already approved 32 schemes and are accepting bids for the final eight.
We expect to be competing against a large number of bids from across the country (including Stepping Hill’s £500m bid for a new hospital). We are hopeful our schemes will be chosen, as they support our ambition to develop new facilities to benefit patients and staff.
If we are successful, these new developments will offer improved quality of care and recovery rates, care closer to people’s homes (supporting the national target of eliminating out of area placements) and reduced length of stay and readmission rates.
It supports our aim of providing a great place to work for existing staff, while also benefiting recruitment and retention. This will reduce reliance on temporary staffing, further saving money and improving quality.
We also expect to save around £16m (£3m from the Stockport/Tameside development and £13m from Bury) mainly by not having to maintain ageing facilities and reducing rent on buildings we don’t own.
We expect to hear the outcome of this first phase later this year, with the chosen eight schemes announced in spring 2022. If we are successful, we will involve our staff, patients and others in further developing our plans. We’ll keep you up to date on our progress.