All Points North – The Delivery of North View

Synopsis

North View is Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust’s new 150 bed, £106M Adult Acute inpatient unit, at North Manchester General hospital. The scheme replaced the Trust’s inpatient dormitory accommodation – Park House, and forms part of the NHP/Healthy Neighbourhood Masterplan for the site which reimagines a multi-faceted and holistic approach to healthcare delivery at the heart of the Community.

Key topics/themes –
• Once in a lifetime opportunity to redesign a service. The clinical vision. Clinical and Operational learnings from the past.
• Funding/politics/navigating the Business case process. The ‘Economics’ of modern MH inpatient care. The need for change.
• Design brief – Continuing to push boundaries and apply innovation.
• Designing/engagement/procurement through the pandemic. Challenges and reflections.
• Co-production/Stakeholders informing design. > ‘Person-Centred-approach’, ensuring SU voice is not lost in the engineering.
• NHP context/Healthy neighbourhoods master-planning. Integrating the design/delivery within the site wide masterplan/NHP timelines/diverse stakeholder group.
• Creating/protecting a human scale on a major build. Maintaining the ‘person perspective’. Avoiding the asylum.
• Designing multi-storey inpatient environments >challenges/opportunities. ‘Gardens in the air’.
• Risk and nursing> Evolution of Ward typology design, standardisation vs pathway drivers. Safety and psychologically informed environments.
• Place making and narratives. The importance of landscape and artwork. Addressing the legacies of the past and a reset on the role of MH services in the community.
• NZC and Mental health settings. Fully electric solution. Reflections/lessons learned.
• Construction delivery through a pandemic, European War, cost-of-living crisis.
• Handover/transition planning/commissioning > use of tech and VR.
• First 6 months of occupation > reflections/early indicators around changed behaviours/ownership. Lessons learned and future legacy.

The presentation would take a multi-facetted approach with representations/insights from the Trust (GMMH – Estates and Clinical), Service users and staff, Designers (GDA/iteriad) and possibly contractors (IHP).