A derelict former hospital could be transformed into a GP practice and mental health centre, at a cost of almost £4m.
A full planning application has been submitted to Trafford council for the former Stretford Memorial Hospital in Old Trafford, previously owned by Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust. The proposals, from entrepreneur and investor Mark Schofield, would transform the Stretford Memorial Hospital on Seymour Grove site, which closed in 2015 and has sat empty ever since.
The building has been targeted by vandals, arsonists and squatters and has cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of pounds in private security fees over the last seven years. According to a Freedom of Information request response, security costs incurred by the Trust from 2015-2021 totalled more than £260,000.
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The site comprises Basford House, which was built in 1860 as a private residence, plus a two-storey wing. Basford House is set to be revamped and converted into a GP surgery, while the two-storey building will become a day-care mental health and wellbeing centre.
Two existing single-storey buildings also on site will be renovated to service the surgery. There will be a car park and extensive landscaping to preserve the area’s green open spaces and protect the well-established trees in the grounds.
Mark Schofield said: “The costs [of security on the site] are being met by the taxpayer, and are substantial and escalating. The site is subject to significant vandalism and instances of arson.
“I understand there have been expressions of interest in the past from housing developers, but that these have come to nothing.
“The site’s status as a non-designated heritage asset, combined with the urgent need for community healthcare provision, means my proposal sets out a clear solution which is in keeping with its history at a time when local health services are insufficiently resourced and the NHS is under enormous pressure.
“I hope the Trust will embrace the proposal for re-use for healthcare services rather than wait for unsubstantiated and unrealistic housing proposals, especially as in the meantime security costs are having to be met by the taxpayer.”
Basford House was built as a home for Henry Beecroft Jackson, a retired cotton shipping merchant turned venture capitalist.
During the First World War, it was lent to the British Red Cross as a staging hospital for injured service personnel.
From 1925, it was a maternity hospital. Pop star Andy Gibb, brother of the Bee
Gees, was born there in 1958.
It later became a geriatric hospital which closed in 2015 when services were transferred to Trafford General.
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