Wharfedale Hospital

Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust operates seven hospitals across five sites: St James’s Hospital, Leeds General Infirmary, Leeds Children’s Hospital, Chapel Allerton Hospital, Seacroft Hospital, Wharfedale Hospital and the Leeds Dental Institute. At Wharfedale Hospital, Otley Lichfields advised the Trust’s contractor BAM with respect to the availability of permitted development rights development comprising the installation of plant and electrical infrastructure, including the provision of new louvres, and a temporary contractor’s compound. In preparing advice, Lichfields liaised with planning officers at Leeds Council who confirmed the availability of the Certificate of Lawfulness application procedures should confirmatory certification be required.

The works paved the way for a new £12million unit at Wharfedale Hospital which includes operating theatres and wards which are now open, reducing the time patients wait for surgery and providing protected space for planned operations to take place. The Elective Care Hub creates additional operating theatre capacity away from Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust’s main acute hospital sites, increasing the number of patients that can be treated each week. It includes two new theatres (taking the total number at the hospital to four), a recovery area, an admissions and discharge area alongside making an existing ward operational overnight.