Green light for new Taunton Surgical Centre

Planning consent has been granted for a major new £79.5m surgical centre which has also just had funding approval from the Department of Health.

We were appointed by Taunton and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust to design a new Surgical and Critical Care Unit and Endoscopy Suite at Musgrove Park Hospital in Taunton.

The new centre will include six endoscopy rooms, patient recovery and clinical support areas, eight operating theatres which include two interventional radiology theatres, recovery areas and clinical support together with 22 critical care beds.

The surgical unit will have dedicated wards ensuring the patients remain within the appropriate care team whilst in recovery, allowing staff to be able to work more efficiently with all the supporting facilities at their fingertips.

“We are designing a hospital complex of buildings that can expand and respond to future needs,” says healthcare architect director, Nick Fairham. “Musgrove Park was originally built in the 1940s with corridors so wide you could drive a jeep down them. Now we design hospitals where wards and care units are well connected so there is no need for automated transport to get from the operating theatre to the wards. It is excellent news that this major project has been given the green light as it is of huge significance to the local community.”

The new building will be connected by glazed link corridors to the Jubilee Building, which opened in 2014 and was also designed by BDP along with its landscaped gardens.