The Newcastle Hospitals NHS Trust has finally revealed plans for its state of the art new Children's Heart Centre, and it hopes work on the building will begin next year.
The new facility will see the world-renowned children's heart unit moved from its current location at the Freeman Hospital to the RVI. The children's heart unit being on the same site as the city's other paediatric services was one of the outcomes of an NHS review into the future of children's heart services which concluded in 2019.
The NHS Trust is now consulting on its initial plans for the site - with a view to submitting a planning application which would, should it be approved, see work begin in early 2023. Hospital bosses hope work would take around 22 months and as such be complete by late 2024.
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Speaking about the plans, Dame Jackie Daniel - the NHS Trust's chief exec - said: "This week we have begun a consultation process to support our application for planning permission for a new dedicated Children’s Heart Centre which will be next to – and part of – The Great North Children’s Hospital.
"This state-of-the-art centre will become the new home of all of our children’s heart services, including heart transplants, and is an ambitious and exciting project that would bring all of our paediatric services together on one site."
Working with planning consultancy Lichfields, the hospital trust has published a series of images and fly-through videos showing what the new unit might look like.
Dame Jackie added: "The new centre is one of a number of exciting estate investments across the Trust which also includes our proposed New Specialist Hospital Building at the RVI and building work is already underway for our Day Treatment Centre at the Freeman Hospital which will be completed towards the end of the summer."
The Government has committed £41.7m to the project - which will see the new building house all of the Trust's children's heart services - including transplants. Across three floors there will be inpatient wards, space for surgery and accommodation for outpatients. The building will also have an enclosed bridge connecting it directly to the main Great North Children's Hospital.
Outside space will include "therapy and play spaces" - while the consultation site also highlights that the proposed building would "represent the Trust's most energy efficient building". The aim is, according to the documents, that the building would have a net-zero carbon footprint when operational.
This would be achieved by installing a 100% electric energy system, ensuring a "highly insulated and airtight" construction, and installing solar panels and "green roofs".
The new children's heart unit forms part of a series of construction projects at the Newcastle Hospitals Trust as it carries out its ten-year estates strategy. The Trust has already broken ground on a new day-surgery centre at the Freeman - which is designed to increase surgical capacity and bring down waiting lists - while it is hoping to hear if its bid for £190m of Government money for a "New Specialist Hospital" building at the RVI has been successful.
The latter project would see a new five-storey Richardson Wing built which would "be a purpose-built home for many of the highly specialist services needed each year by thousands of patients from across our region and further afield". That building is hoped to include facilities for critical care patients, burns patients and specialist maternity services.
To view the consultation, visit rvichildrensheartcentre.com
