Refurbishing office space to create new medical centre to support growing community

Customers: Clacton Community Practice (The Ranworth Surgery and Epping Close Surgery) 

NHSPS representatives: Paul Cross, Regional Partnership Director; Barry Clark, Principal Construction Manager

Contractor: Colne Valley

Architect: LSI Architects

Surveyor: Ingleton Wood/QS Aecom

North East Essex CCG needed to find a site in Clacton to meet a growing need for GP services which could no longer be met solely by the two local practices. The Ranworth Surgery in Frinton Road Medical Centre had run out of capacity in a cramped, residential style premises whilst Epping Close was in temporary accommodation in the renal building next to Kennedy House.

Following an options appraisal of local estate opportunities, Kennedy House was chosen as the most pragmatic solution.  The ground floor of the property needed a full refurbishment of void space and expansion into space used by a community health prover to create new clinical space, waiting area and support space to accommodate a growing patient list.

The CCG has been building a case for funding for over a decade to reach this solution but had been struggling to get much traction. Funding was awarded in 2017,  but fell short of the total sum required to achieve the optimum solution. 

After an approach from the CCG, our Portfolio Optimisation, Property Management and Analytics team worked with the GPs and CCG on an options development and analysis, assessing the state of the building and demand/urgency of investment. We supported their business case development, by providing additional landlord capital of £710,000 to upgrade the sites’ heating and car park to help make the project viable. The business case was approved in January 2020, enabling the funding to be secured and work to finally begin.

We needed to bring this space back into meaningful use.

Kennedy Way was an existing NHS asset, but with a poorly used ground floor with a large area of vacant space.  The solution was to bring this space back into meaningful use and provide expanded primary care services without expanding the NHS estate.

Our construction team procured the services of a consultant and contractor and then project managed the build, liaising closely with the CCG and practices to make sure they were involved in the design of the building and that it met their needs and wants.

We held formal monthly project board meetings and regular one to ones with the CCG’s Senior Estates Development Manager.

Works began in September 2020 and were completed in April 2021. The works cost £2.7m and were mainly funded by STP/ETTF, but supported by NHSPS on certain aspects .

The new centre will be able to support 12,000 patients, 3,000 more than then previous two surgeries and provide an extension of the services they can receive.

The centre houses eight consulting rooms, seven treatment rooms, a phlebotomy room, group therapy toom, a training space for clinicians and a digital facility allowing patients to have remote consultations without the need to travel, as well as a staff kitchen and showers.

The interior decoration is a dementia-friendly orange with beach huts painted on the walls of the main Clinical corridor and a silhouette of Clacton Pier in the main waiting area.

The refurbished car park has 66 spaces allocated to the practice and will also be the site of an innovative social prescribing hub to support holistic patient care, the first phase of which is expected to be completed in the summer.

There is also space for patients to learn from clinicians about how to better manage their health.

Once the two surgeries were relocated into Kennedy House, Frinton Road Medical Centre was surplus for disposal and the temporary space occupied by Epping Close was given back to the renal services provider.