Visitors to Blackpool Victoria Hospital can now arrive in style, through the hospital’s new main entrance.
Visitors and patients who arrive either by bus, taxi or car now have a single point of entry to the hospital, ensuring a much-improved patient experience through easily-understood wayfinding principles.
The nw main entrance includes retail outlets such as Costa Coffee, Marks and Spencer, WH Smith and Lloyds Pharmacy, who are all in the main foyer area. From here there is direct access to all departments via the hospital street, which is accessed directly to the rear of the main entrance on one side and via a lift, staircase and escalator on the other.
The building also includes office accommodation at first and second-floor levels above the retail units, which accommodate the clinical and management teams serving the hospital.
The entrance is the final stage of a scheme to provide improved access to the hospital and it is supported by a 1,500-space multi-storey car park. The capital for this development has been borrowed from the Department of Health and will be paid back from income generated through the retail and parking charges.
Gilling Dod Architects has worked closely with Blackpool Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and their advisors for over 12 years and in that time has helped to reshape the trust estate, rationalising major services from disparate areas of the site into new-build or refurbished accommodation. This has seen major improvements in the overall patient experience and with the new main entrance and multi-storey car park now complete, the critical pieces of the jigsaw are in place to enable the final future phases of the Development Control Plan to be implemented.