Planning permission has been granted for the new Arthur Rank Hospice in Cambridge.
South Cambridgeshire District Council was given the green light to push ahead with plans for the development on the Brookfield site in Mill Road.
The £10m hospice will have 24 beds, which will be double the capacity currently available. There will be 16 single rooms with en-suite facilities and two four-bedded bays.
Plans include a commercial kitchen that will be able to provide freshly-cooked food for patients, staff and visitors. This will be a significant improvement on the current cook/chill facilities. There will also be new educational facilities to enable the hospice to train other healthcare professionals in good end-of-life care.
The setting at Shelford Bottom is green, leafy and tranquil and the building has been designed to fit sympathetically into the landscape.
The hospice has been designed by LSI Architects and will be built by Barnes Construction.
Dr Lynn Morgan, hospice chief executive, said: “The new hospice is light, airy and modern. We were hoping to get a hospice that would raise people’s spirits and I believe LSI has definitely achieved this.”
Louise Knights, associate at LSI Architects and chief architect for the scheme, added: “Receiving planning permission is a significant milestone towards providing Arthur Rank Hospice with the building its fantastic hard work deserves. The new hospice will provide every patient and visitor with a direct connection to the outside, with the external space being treated as equally as important as the internal environment.”
The hospice is designed to cater for the increasing population of Cambridge and the surrounding area and also the rise in the number of people who will live longer, but at the end of their life have multiple medical conditions which will make their care more complex.
Building work will begin in January 2015 and will be completed in summer 2016.
