Final stage £50m College Green care village completes

Building work on the new health and wellbeing centre in Bournville has officially completed and the GPs have moved and are welcoming patients to its new premises.

College Green Medical Centre – formerly based at Griffins Brook Surgery, Bunbury Road Surgery and Granton Medical Centre have relocated to the new building, which has been built on the former site of Bournville College.

Daniel Hill, managing partner at College Green Medical Practice, said: “We are delighted to finally move into our new building. The move means a better working environment for our staff and most importantly a better experience for our patients. The importance of Primary Care has never been greater and we will now be able to provide more services to the people in the community.”

Working as part of a newly-formed Primary Care Network, the practices merging will be able to accommodate other healthcare professionals such as clinical pharmacists, social prescribers, physiotherapists, physician’s associates and community paramedics.

The new centre is the fourth and final stage of the £50m College Green care village. Work first started on the College Green care village in 2012 when Bournville College relocated to Longbridge and the site was left vacant.

Bournville Village Trust created a masterplan for the site, which included a 212 apartment retirement village managed by ExtraCare Charitable Trust, a care home for people with dementia managed by Avery Healthcare, and 16 independent living cottages.

Pete Richmond, chief executive of Bournville Village Trust, said: “We are really pleased that the final part of the jigsaw that is College Green has been completed. The health and wellbeing centre, and the village as a whole, will ensure the people of south Birmingham have the services and facilities they need to keep healthy, well and really thrive.

“We have been proud to work closely with the NHS, which consulted with patients on the merger of the surgeries, and Assura to bring about the best health and wellbeing centre possible.”

Ashley Seymour, Assura senior development manager, said: “We are delighted to have helped bring this project to completion during a very testing time and the end result is testament to the

teamwork of everyone involved. Covid‐19 hit early in the programme but this enabled us to make some changes to the building that will improve pandemic resilience in the future. In addition, we have worked with the University of Stirling on a dementia‐friendly environment.”