The adaptive reuse of empty spaces offers an opportunity to bring much-needed healthcare facilities into communities while addressing waiting times and health inequalities
One of the outcomes of the global pandemic has been the demonstration of how effective good design can be at supporting a health service under pressure and now, after delivering groundbreaking schemes for Nightingale emergency hospitals in England, BDP has once again created an innovative and sustainable healthcare solution that offers a fresh approach to localised healthcare facilities for the NHS. As our NHS reaches its 75th anniversary, finding solutions to relieve the pressure on this valuable service is more important than ever before. In 2022, BDP progressed its designs from the Nightingale Emergency hospitals to deliver a prime example of an innovative and sustainable healthcare centre in south-west England.
Dorset Health Village occupies vacant space of Dolphin Shopping Centre
Dorset Health Village occupies what was vacant space on the top floor of the Dolphin Shopping Centre in Poole, allowing the University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust to provide diagnostic services in the heart of the community. Reusing equipment from the emergency hospitals, BDP was able to quickly bring much-needed services, such as testing for orthopaedics, ophthalmology and dermatology closer to public transport links, helping to make healthcare facilities more accessible. High-quality waiting and consultancy spaces, staff areas and a designated mammography room are now part of the facility, in some cases allowing multiple tests to be carried out during the same appointment instead of requiring patients to make repeat visits.
Healthcare inequalities are among the widest in Scotland
It is a solution for tackling waiting times that has the potential to be rolled out across the country and which has particular relevance in Scotland, where healthcare inequalities are among the widest in the UK, with mortality rates almost twice as high in areas of deprivation as they are in the country’s most affluent areas. Faster and easier access to healthcare facilities has a role to play in reducing the widening gap in those figures, while repurposing empty shops and vacant malls could also play an important part in revitalising Scotland’s high streets, where one in six retail premises now lies empty.
Scotland’s 20-minute neighbourhoods
This also fits with the Scottish Government’s stated aims of restructuring its planning criteria in order to create 20-minute neighbourhoods, where most of the services that people need are within easy walking distance of their homes. Not only would this help to increase health outcomes through greater activity but it would also reduce reliance on fossil fuels for transport and make towns and communities more resilient. This combination of outcomes has already begun to be recognised in Dorset, where the new health centre is playing an integral role in reconnecting local people with nearby businesses, cafes and retail outlets which had struggled to regain customers following the pandemic.
BDP has extensive experience in providing effective solutions to healthcare provision and the Glasgow studio is now presenting its ideas to healthcare professionals in Scotland, who are looking for new ways of delivering treatment and diagnostic services and bringing down waiting times that have reached new levels since the first Covid outbreak. Today, what was not so long ago an empty space on the upper level of a quiet shopping centre is now an accessible healthcare facility at the heart of the community.
There is clearly real potential for the adaptive reuse of existing spaces to produce health, social and economic benefits and BDP, with its background in delivering this kind of mixed-use design solution, believes that Dorset Health Village is a showcase for how the NHS in Scotland could make quick and effective strides in speeding up the delivery of services to patients.
Tel: +44 (0)141 227 7900
