Where is the St Bernard’s site?

The St Bernard’s site is based in Southall in west London, next door to Ealing Hospital. It’s currently home to our medium and low secure forensic services, as well as inpatient wards for the London Borough of Ealing and a number of other community based services. The Trust’s headquarters is also based on this site. 

What’s happening?

Over the next few years, the St Bernard’s Hospital site will undergo a major redevelopment. This will result in modern, well constructed buildings, designed to support the high quality care we provide today, with the flexibility to meet the needs of our patients and services in the future.

You can see the proposed site plans here.

In addition, we will be stepping up the transformation work we began a few years ago. To help us achieve this, we’ll be looking at the way local services are currently provided and seeing what alterations can be made to ensure these are being provided in the best way possible, as well as assessing what patient improvements we can introduce to make the best use of our resources.

You can find out all the latest details about this project from our Local Services News.

Why are you redeveloping the site?

As well as our drive to continuously improve the services we offer, one of the main reasons for the proposed redevelopment of St Bernard’s is to upgrade the sites infrastructure. This will allow us to respond to concerns raised by our commissioners and move all medium secure patients out of the Tony Hillis Wing by 2015.

What’s happened so far?

The Trust is looking at various redevelopment projects at St Bernard’s which will improve the site. So far, most of our progress has been made plans to construct to a new medium secure unit (MSU).

In April 2012, the Chief Executive’s report announced that the Trust Board had agreed to the construction of an 80 bed medium secure unit (MSU) on the existing John Conolly Wing site – as its preference for the redevelopment of the St Bernard’s site.

This proposal was put forward in our Outline Business Case, which was approved by NHS London, our strategic health partners, in August 2012. This document is now with the Department of Health and explains the rationale behind the project, its timescales and implementation.

November 2012 saw the Trust Board approve the Full Business Case for this project, which was immediately submitted to NHS London. Following their approval the FBC will go straight to the DH, who we hope will announce their decision by the end of April 2013.

In preparation for construction of the new building, the Trust began looking at and preparing alternative accommodation for the patients and services currently located in the JCW. This has included upgrading Glynn Ward to accommodate older people’s services, embarking on a £3 million refurbishment of B Block for local services and moving the Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) to Hammersmith.

Throughout the next year, there will also be a number of additional moves to get the site ready for the wider redevelopment of St Bernard’s. This will allow us to make better use of NHS resources, whilst creating more space for clinical services.

What’s happening next?

The refurbishment of B Block will be completed in March 2013 and the building will begin housing patients immediately. At the same time, some of our rehabilitation services, such as picture framing, the print shop and the Recovery Hub will move to commercial premises in west Ealing. Moving rehabilitation services off site means services users gain real life work experience, such as dealing with the public and working with customers. In May 2013, the Trust will transfer its entire corporate staff off of the St Bernard’s site to Armstrong Way, in Southall.

Our redevelopment team also continues to work closely with service leads, staff and patients to identify suitable, alternative accommodation for other local services and those currently located in buildings at the front of the site, earmarked for sale to raise vital funding for future site redevelopment.  This exercise will shortly be completed and later this year we will be moving onto the second phase of the St Bernard’s redevelopment, which will include land sales.

How can I find out more?

If you would like more information about this project, or details of how you can get involved please email redevelopment.team@wlmht.nhs.uk