Water Meadow View (WMV) is Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust’s new £30-million inpatient unit for adults with learning disabilities, set in the picturesque landscape of Guild Park, Lancashire. WMV provides a safe, modern and therapeutic environment for adults aged 18 and over who are experiencing mental health challenges and require inpatient care. Design started in June 2023, and the building completed in December 2025.
WMV has been designed to meet the specific and often complex needs of people with learning disabilities, offering person-centred, trauma informed care. The service places a strong emphasis on dignity and respect, ensuring that people are supported in a way that is right for their individual needs. The layout, interior design, landscape design, signage and even the naming, were all co-produced with Service Users, carers, staff and Experts by experience, who were engaged from the outset.
WMV delivers two wards, subdivided into two single-sex 5-bedroom areas within a 10-bedroom ward with standard en-suite bedrooms, and a 4-bedroom ward of single occupancy areas, intended for patients with more complex needs.
The facility includes therapy and sensory spaces, a mixture of high/low-stimulus areas, support spaces and living areas. WMV also has a community IST-suite within the facility, which supports people living within the community who are not necessarily needing inpatient care. The service offers specialist assessment and intervention to avoid inappropriate hospital admissions and to enable individuals to remain in their own home in their local community and maintain that citizenship and sense of belonging.
The form and materials used on WMV were intentionally ambiguous and muted, with minimal visual-noise to suit LD criteria. Despite not being a ‘forensic’ mental health building, the materials still had to be robust and anti-vandal. The design benefits from previous LD-specific build POE’s in terms of approach/layout/sensory-provision/detailing.
The building form and geometry was largely influenced by the site itself, with the challenging sloped landscape and tree root protection zones providing natural challenges and boundaries.
The building was then designed to prioritise views out into the landscape, as well as defining different outdoor spaces, which all serve individual functions. The entrance garden aims to gently transition service-users and visitors into the building through a walled-garden, the central courtyard provides a safe and secure environment whilst maintaining access to the outdoors, and finally the rear gardens provide space to wander and reflect in a more free, natural environment.
A large part of therapy for LD patients is through their connection with nature. By adopting a biophilic design approach, nature and green spaces permeate the interior space through materials and finishes and gives linkages to the surrounding landscape both physically and visually. This ultimately drove the architectural design, creating a building that has natural enclosures/natural de-escalation spaces as opposed to having these rooms formally allocated.
Water Meadow View is part of a wider modernisation of the Guild park site and intentionally uses the surrounding natural landscape as a healing asset and regenerative tool for mental health and wellbeing.
