St Bernard’s Hospital

West London NHS Trust offers a diverse range of care and treatment for over 800,000 people living in the London Borough’s of Ealing, Hammersmith & Fulham and Hounslow alongside services offered nationally. At St Bernard’s Hospital in Ealing it offers medium and low secure mental health services to support the local community.

The St Bernard’s estate is highly sensitive with several listed buildings on site alongside a Scheduled Ancient Monument and Conservation Area. Since 2009 Lichfields has worked with the Trust to rationalise its estate and move the care facilities from the listed buildings on site that were no longer fit for purpose in a health care environment. Lichfields identified land suitable for new clinical developments within this highly sensitive context through a Development Framework and informed the disposal strategy for the listed buildings, the aim of which was to maximise capital receipts from the sale of the redundant land and buildings that the Trust could then reinvest in its facilities.

This strategy paved the way for planning permissions coordinated and secured by Lichfields for:
 

• A new 80 bedroom medium secure unit, known as Medway Lodge forming part of the Three Bridges Medium Secure Unit. The lodge itself is designed with a series of ‘fingers’ which extend from the spine of the building into the communal garden, thus allowing all bedrooms to benefit from natural light and green space. There is also a multi-use gardens area, a horticultural therapy units and two landscaped roof gardens. It opened in 2016.
   
• The conversion of the redundant Grade II listed former hospital building to provide 600 new apartments set within communal courtyards. The building was sold with the benefit of the planning permission and listed building consent to developers who have since built and delivered these new homes.

 
Lichfields continues to support the Trust at St Bernard’s Hospital on its estate management strategy and working with Kier secured planning permission for improvements to the Wells Unit, which forms part of a low secure unit at the hospital, to enhance its facilities.  We are also advising the Trust on its other assets in West London.