A VISION FOR A NEW HOSPITAL ON A NEW SITE – ESSEX STYLE
This is what our Health Service can do when it wants the best for patients.
It’s the design by the Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust for a new hospital for Harlow in Essex, on a new site away from the centre of town.
A spacious site with plenty of greenery and space. There are car parks, but they will have trees. Buildings are functional but on a human scale, a maximum of seven storeys. There is room for expansion.
Harlow’s wise NHS managers rejected town-centre options which would have been short on space.
This is the link to the Harlow Trust’s redevelopment plans:
This is what should be possible in West Hertfordshire – but our local Trust stubbornly persist in planning for Vicarage Road tower blocks of up to 16 storeys – a height of 260 feet or so. The £1.3 bn-plus towering infirmary will be surrounded by up to 1500 flats and houses. Access and transport are poor, and will remain poor.
The only real landscaping at the new Watford Hospital will be … on the flat roofs of the tower blocks.
The cost will put the Trust’s fragile finances under pressure for years. That is plain irresponsible.
Why can’t West Herts have this quality of hospital? Why must the Trust continue with its plans for a looming hospital on a cramped and difficult site?
What motivates the Trust to refuse even to contemplate a new hospital on an accessible new site?