LHL Healthcare Success: Cromwell Primary Care Centre as reported in the Yorkshire Post

Cromwell Primary Care Centre, Grimsby

A SERIES of contracts to project manage the development of new primary care centres throughout the North have been won by surveyors and architects, the LHL Group.

The contracts, which include three new centres in Grimsby with an £11.5m capital value as well as others in West Yorkshire, Manchester and Nottingham, have been won through LHL Healthcare, a specialist division of LHL Group which supports building projects within the NHS and private healthcare.

They include the £1.5m Raj Medical Centre, Grimsby, being developed for Raj Medical Practice which serves 4,500 patients. Building work is due to start in February and complete in November 2010 when the practice will relocate from an adjacent semi-detached house which is unsuitable for modern healthcare delivery.

A planning application has been submitted for the second contract, a £4m primary care centre in Grimsby. If North East Lincolnshire planners back the scheme, building work will start in April and take 12 months after which it will be occupied by Birkwood Surgery which has 6,500 patients and will move from former residential premises with no further expansion capacity.

The third Grimsby scheme is the £6m Springfield Primary Care Centre, Scartho. Building work started last month (Dec 2009) and will finish in May 2011. The GP practice, Scartho Medical Centre, which is relocating from premises with no scope for expansion, currently serves 10,000 patients but has the capacity to grow to 15,000 in the new centre.

The Grimsby schemes are all part of a ten-year estates strategy by NE Lincs Care Trust Plus to upgrade all inadequate GP premises.

By the end of the strategy LHL Healthcare will have supported the delivery of 12 new primary care centres including Freshney Green Primary Care Centre, Grimsby, which serves 32,000 patients and completed this autumn and Cromwell Road Primary Care Centre which opened in December and includes four GP practices, a substance misuse counselling suite, minor surgery and diagnostics suite, community nursing facilities and a community dental and mammography unit.

In each case LHL Healthcare acted for the GP practices and North East Lincolnshire Care Trust Plus, formulating the development brief and dealing with the appointed developer throughout the site assembly and design development stage. On start of construction, LHL Healthcare has become tenant’s surveyor ensuring that the centre is delivered in line with the development agreement and NHS policy.

New of the contracts comes when LHL Healthcare, which has more than 25 years experience in healthcare development and has been involved in 30 primary care schemes during the last ten years, has been nominated as Consultant of The Year Award by North East Lincolnshire Care Trust Plus in an award scheme run by specialist publication Health Investors.

Head of LHL Healthcare, director, Ken Hawley, says: “North East Lincolnshire Care Trust Plus is delivering a vigorous and exciting estates strategy which typifies a significant shift in direction taken by all stakeholders in primary and social care moving away from a territorial approach to one of co-operation and sharing resources which has benefits for all those involved”.

“We’re pleased to be supporting the authority, and others, in this initiative and that they recognize our support to the extent of nominating us for an award which is prized among those who work in this sector.”

The LHL Group, which has 32 staff, has offices in Doncaster, York, Hull, Newcastle and Harrogate. The business works regionally and nationally offering a range of services including building surveying, architecture, quantity surveying, property inspections, project and construction management and health and safety work.

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