Approval granted for Midland Met Hospital

Approval granted for Midland Met Hospital

FINAL PLANNING APPROVAL was granted last night for the Midland Met new hospital on Grove Lane in Smethwick.

Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council planning committee gave the multi-million pound hospital the green light to proceed on its brownfield site in the heart of Smethwick. This is the culmination of years of planning, consultation with the local population, and engagement with staff.

Midland Met brings emergency and acute healthcare for both adults and children onto a single site.  This means that the most complex care provided by the Trust can happen consistently seven days a week.  Meanwhile, outpatient services, intermediate care facilities and planned surgery will continue and be further developed on the City Hospital and Sandwell General Hospital sites.  That means that most care presently provided locally will stay local.  The Birmingham and Midland Eye Centre remains on Dudley Road.   The Trust continues to expand services in community locations such as Rowley Regis, as well as to provide more care from strategic primary care locations like Neptune Health Centre in Tipton and Tower Hill Medical Centre in Perry Barr.

Chairman, Richard Samuda, said: “This is yet another exciting step in the decade long campaign to bring 21st century hospital care to local residents and create an environment that staff can be proud to work within.  This is the last-but-one step, with the Trust now able to proceed to try and sign a contract, with our preferred supplier.  We aim to do that before January 2016.”

• Midland Met is due to open in Autumn 2018. It will have 669 beds and 13 operating theatre suites, as well as modern diagnostic equipment.  The new A&E will replace emergency care facilities at City Hospital, and Sandwell A&E will become an Urgent Care Centre.

• A dedicated spacious car park on the new site will be run by the Trust, and will allow underground access to wards and departments.  Bus routes will come onto the site.  The Trust will maintain its current ‘open visiting’ policy to support relatives in spending time with loved ones who are inpatients.

• The new hospital has many important design features.  For example, all bathrooms in ward environments will be fully wheelchair accessible.  Half of the beds in the building will be in single rooms.  The standard design will allow the Trust to alter services within the building in decades to come.  And the building makes extensive use of robots to move non-clinical equipment and services.

•   The Fifth Floor Winter Garden will be the main space within which visitors can wait, eat and drink, and obtain information.  This spacious facility, accessible from all levels, will be the heart of the new site.

With a focus on regeneration, the new hospital will reinvigorate services and infrastructure in the surrounding areas supporting the local economy and creating more opportunities for work, education, leisure and wellbeing.  Facilities for staff and visitors in the new building will be let through separate contracts not covered by the Government’s PF2 model.  The garden space around the building will accommodate developments such as the Trust’s local community gardening partnership. In addition, Midland Met will also have a habitat designed to attract one of the UK’s endangered native birds – The Black Redstart. The little bird (about the size of a robin) has been spotted in the area, and as there are worryingly only approximately 40 mating pairs left in the UK, the Midland Met will offer it a home within the grounds.

Clinical Commissioning Group Accountable Officer, Andy Williams, says: “We are delighted that the Trust has reached this pivotal stage.  Local GPs and partner organisations have always supported the Midland Met as an essential step towards our vision of more care closer to home and higher standards for complex care. This is a good news story for the local NHS.”

For all the details about the new hospital please click here