3 Shires

Client: Arden PFI

Location: Derby, Leicester and Spalding

Value: £45Million

Status: Completed 2009

Gilling Dod was pleased to be appointed by the Arden Partnership to develop two of the phases of the 3 Shires Batched PFI scheme. This Landmark project was the first batched mental health PFI scheme in the country updating aged facilities across a number of sites for Trusts in Derbyshire and Leicestershire. The constructor partner was Costain.

The largest phase of the batch, the Kingsway site development in Derby has 4 No. individual buildings gathered around a central green and integrated into an existing parkland landscape, to create a sense of place and community. The scheme comprises inpatient facilities of 8 Adult MH beds, 14 Older Adult MH beds and 36 Dementia beds. There is also a social hub, staff training and support services building. The designs cater specifically for this patient group with issues of mobility and access, inclusion and community. Corridors are treated as points of reference for way finding and vary in shape and width to provide meeting spaces and landmarks.

The Leicester component of the PFI was to redevelop the Gorse Hill Hospital site to produce a 20 bed Acute LD MH unit on the site of a former children’s psychiatric unit. The scheme was designed in the form of a series of self contained four bedded bungalows, linked by a racetrack type corridor to central facilities for Occupational Therapy, etc. The unit has extensive landscaped gardens and was designed so as to provide both secure and external landscaped areas, which were themed, alongside the design of the individual elements of the building, to assist with the identity of each flat as a separate small community within the whole.