South Cambridgeshire District Council has announced that planning permission has been approved for LSI’s new Arthur Rank Hospice. The hospice will replace the existing hospice on the Brookfield site, Mill Road, Cambridge and will have 24 beds, double the number of beds currently available with 16 single rooms plus en-suite facilities and two, four bedded bays. Plans include a commercial kitchen which 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 and super 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. Dr Lynn Morgan, CEO of the charity said “the new hospice is light, airy and modern. We were hoping to get a hospice which would raise people’s spirits and I believe LSI has definitely achieved this. The lead architect, Louise Knights, has worked closely with all of our staff to ensure that the hospice really meets our needs and will function very well”.
Louise Knights, Associate at LSI, said “Receiving planning permission is a significant milestone towards providing Arthur Rank Hospice with the building that their 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.
The building work will begin in January 2015 and will be completed in summer 2016. The build will cost in the region of £10 million, £5.5 million has already been raised.
The charity stressed that they are very keen for people to donate to this very worthy cause and hope that when people see the new hospice going up they will be encouraged to contribute. Cambridgeshire County Council has agreed an interim loan to enable the charity to start building. More detail of what the hospice will look like can be seen on https://www.arhc.org.uk .
