Mental Health Facility Planned for Barnes Hospital Site
NHS Health Trust to submit more plans for centre and special needs school
A visualisation of the development submitted with the planning application
November 29, 2022
A £11 million state-of-the-art mental health facility is to be built at the Barnes Hospital in South Worple Way.
South West London and St George’s Mental Health NHS Trust revealed it will be spending money as the site is be converted into new homes, the mental health clinic and a special needs school.
The trust is keeping part of the site for outpatient services but has sold the other half to a developer in March 2019 for housing.
Outline plans, to bulldoze some buildings and put up a new health centre, school and housing on the site, were approved in September 2020 – after the hospital was declared surplus to the trust’s requirements.
It is set to submit a new planning application to Richmond Council for the mental health facility and school once final plans have been finalised.
The housing proposals, from Star Land Realty UK and LS Estates, include 106 new flats in blocks of up to four storeys tall and revamps for three other homes. The plans are set to be decided on by Richmond Council soon.
An overview of the development submitted with the application
A fresh statement on the trust’s website says, “The site is underused and its condition and design make it unsuitable for developing modern mental health inpatient care. The trust will be investing £11 million to develop a state-of-the-art facility for the delivery of existing adult outpatient mental health services at Barnes Hospital.”
It adds, “Alongside the planning application, the trust progressed sales of surplus parts of the site in order to provide funding for our wider estate modernisation programme.
“This includes the redevelopment of the trust’s two inpatient sites at Springfield Hospital in Wandsworth and Tolworth Hospital in Kingston, which serve people across South West London. As a result, in March 2019 the Trust sold half of the Barnes Hospital site to a residential developer.
“The site had an existing outline planning permission, granted in 2020, for development of the new healthcare and education facilities, together with residential use. The educational facility planned is a Special Educational Needs School. This is led by LocatED, an arms-length body of the Department for Education, and will be operated by the Beckmead Trust.”
Barnes Isolation Hospital first opened in 1889 to care for patients with infectious diseases. It was later renamed and mainly provided mental health services by the early 1990s. It hasn’t provided inpatient services since 2013.
Charlotte Lillywhite - Local Democracy Reporter
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