The estates strategy was undertaken within the context of the ‘Shaping a Healthier Future’, (SaHF) - a highly flawed programme for North West London and dealt with over 250 000m2 of accommodation on three very different hospital sites -Northwick Park, Central Middlesex and Ealing.

JCA already had a working knowledge of this Trust’s estates through their design of the Northwick Park Emergency Centre (construction completed 2015) and the AcAD at CMH which John Cooper designed in 1998.

The strategy, prepared with the Trust’s clinical and estates teams, developed very detailed proposals for the phased redevelopment of all the Northwick Park clinical facilities, a new local hospital on the Ealing site and the reconfiguration of services at CMH.

Estates strategies that are based on ill-defined clinical strategies and have no secured funding are doomed and our work gathered dust on a shelf for two years. JCA had now worked on two estates strategies within the ‘Shaping a Healthier Future’ quadrant plan and were highly critical of its direction and the assumptions on which it had been made.  In 2017 we decided to revisit the Ealing site and prepare a fully costed set of proposals that could actually work. We developed the notion of a model health village that could exemplify what the components of an integrated health system should be.  A large new community hospital could become the centrepiece for a major residential development with a nursing home, extra-care and social health housing, a hospice a mental health unit and primary care. The funding was carefully designed to minimise the cost to the public purse by using leasehold arrangements for the community and residential developments from which the trust could benefit.