Health company plans to extend new £22m hospital even before it is built
The health company building a new private hospital within the Edgbaston Medical Quarter has lodged plans for the expansion of the facility.
Circle Health began construction on the £22m hospital off Pebble Mill Road, earlier this year.
The hospital will accommodate six operating theatres, 18 inpatient bedrooms and several large recovery suites.
The scheme under development will see the construction of a 13,830m² facility formed from a four-storey hospitality wing and a double storey clinical wing.
New plans submitted to Birmingham City Council outline how the second phase of the development will increase the size of the hospital to 19,000m². This will see a five-storey hospitality wing and a four-storey clinical wing. The footprint of the building will not increase between phases.
The latest phase expands on the scheme currently under construction due to the increased mass of the hospital’s clinical wing to allocate additional bedrooms, dedicated to the rehabilitative therapy.
A design statement submitted with the application states: “The new facility will maintain the same design philosophy of the approved scheme, while increasing the accommodation, and in particular, the number of inpatients bedrooms, widening the offer to include a rehabilitation department.
“The facility will be realised in phases, with an initial area of 13,830m² and the possibility to be extended to 19,000m² at its completed stage.”
The clinical wing, located between the main building entrance and the delivery yard, is a large two-to-four-storey block that will contain, at ground floor, all the clinical functions of the hospital, such as the operating theatres, the first and second stage recovery area and the diagnostic imaging department.
As these areas are highly serviced, to maintain a stable environment, a service zone has been positioned directly above the operating theatres. At the front of the first floor will sit the rehabilitation treatment area, which has been positioned to take advantage of the green views over the leafy Pebble Mill Road.
“Having this direct relationship between plant area and functional medical areas maximises the efficiency of the building services strategy and environmental design of the hospital,” says the design statement.
For the completed hospital, two additional storeys of rehabilitation bedrooms are being positioned at the second and third floors, over the whole clinical wing.
“The design solution is to create a building with the potential to expand whilst maintaining high quality functional spaces required by a fully operational hospital from day one,” it adds.
