NHS to sell off old Wembley Hospital building in Chaplin Road

 

The NHS Property Services has decided that the old hospital buildings at Wembley Centre for Health in Fairview Avenue/Chaplin Road is surplus to requirements and have put it on the market.

Wembley Hospital was opened in 1928 after some years of planning and fundraising and has an interesting history. You can read more on the website Lost Hospitals of London HERE. The facility has servved residents of the borough well over the years. The sell-off is part of the previous Government's One Public Estate policy that encouraged public bodies to develop underused land. The huge Northwick Park development is our biggest later example combining council, hospital, university and housing association land in one scheme.

Savills the agent state:

Key features

• Unconsented residential development opportunity within the LB of Brent
• Strong transport links with Wembley Central Station and Sudbury Town
• The proposed development site extends to 0.72 hectares (1.78 acres)
• For sale freehold with vacant possession
• The Property benefits from positive pre application engagement
• Offers are invited on a subject to planning basis
• The Pre app consists of a residential scheme of 94 units across 3-7 storeys

Local information

·       The property is located within the administrative boundary of the London Borough of Brent. The site is not located in a Conservation Area and there are no locally listed or statutorily listed buildings within or adjacent to the site. A full planning history of the site is provided in a detailed note in the dataroom, provided by Avison Young.

·       The site has development potential for residential use, but may suit other uses, subject to securing the necessary consents.

·       Tate Hindle have produced a number of residential scheme iterations which have been tested at pre-application stage and with the Quality Review Panel. The schemes presented range from approximately 85 - 100 units in buildings of 3-7 storeys. A further scheme which responds to the comments made by the Quality Review Panel is available in the dataroom.

 

Brent Clinical Commissioning Group to move to Brent Civic Centre

Wembley Centre for Health and Care

Brent Clinical Commissioning Group (Brent CCG)  at its meeting on December 5th is likely to go ahead with a proposal to move from Wembley Centre for Health and Care in Chaplin Road, to Brent Civic Centre.

Brent Council already lets out two floors in the Civic Centre to external organisations and is due to cut their staff further in the next budget.

The report going before the CCG states:

The CCG has expressed an interest to be co-located with Brent Council in its Civic Centre (subject to affordability and commercial terms). Equally Brent Council is extremely keen and supportive of this move and fully recognises the opportunities for greater collaboration that co-locating would bring.

The current HQ premises are spread across the Wembley Centre for Health and Care site with staff working in silos largely within cellular offices. This is not an efficient use of space nor does it foster cohesive working arrangements.

Releasing space at the Wembley Centre for Health and Care, under the NHS Property Services vacant space policy, potentially creates an opportunity to reduce CCG running costs. Strategically this also supports the future aspirations for the site to become an out of hospital hub, appropriately sized and fit for purpose.

There are 76 staff working at Brent CCG, the accommodation on offer at Brent Civic Centre is 48 dedicated desks together with shared offices and breakout areas. This move would require the CCG to adopt the NWL Agile Working Policy which recommends a staff to desk ratio of between 6:10 and 7:10. The proposal complies with the policy with a ratio of 6.3:10. The CCG is required to reduce its office accommodation and desk allocation across its estate; as such this proposal is in line with the overall strategic direction being adopted across NWL.

Current estimated project costs are £85,500 to be covered from existing revenue funding.

There is an annual saving to Brent CCG of £446,000 generated by moving to Brent Civic Centre.

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Wembley’s hospitals and the NHS 70th Birthday

Guest blog by Philip Grant

July 5^th 2018 sees the 70^th anniversary of the founding of the National Health Service, and there will be a community tea party in Wembley’s Yellow Pavilion the following day (Friday 6^th July, from 1pm to 4pm) to celebrate the event:-

But what medical facilities did the ordinary folk of Wembley have before the NHS was set up, and who provided these? I was invited to provide some “local history” information for this NHS70 event, and I would like to share some of it with “Wembley Matters” readers here.

Ever since Tudor times (after Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries who had often provided some health care to the areas around them) the Church of England parishes were expected to provide care to poor people within their district. Every year each parish appointed two or three local men to serve as Overseers of the Poor, raising money to meet the costs of providing “relief” and (if they were lucky) some basic medical care.

Most of Wembley was in the Harrow parish, but in the 1840’s two spinster sisters, Anne and Francis Copland, who had inherited their father’s estate at what is now Barham Park, campaigned for Wembley and Sudbury to be made a separate parish, and paid to have St John’s Church built in Harrow Road, not far from their home. They were great philanthropists, providing money for a school, and a workmen’s hall (including a small library).

Anne Copland, c.1860

In 1871 (the year before she died) Anne Copland gave money to build and endow a Village Hospital. The site is now Wilkinsons, in Wembley High Road, near the junction with Park Lane.

Charles Goddard, 

Unfortunately, Anne had said that only the interest (at 4%) from the investments she had given the hospital could be used to fund its running costs, and the hospital had to stop taking inpatients in 1883. After that, the building became a doctor’s house, at which the sick could be seen, and given medicines from a dispensary.

The doctor living in the former cottage hospital, Charles Goddard, became Wembley’s first Medical Officer of Health, when it was made a separate District Council in 1895. He held that post for around forty years, and in 1924 he called a public meeting to propose that a new hospital be built. There was a lot of support from local people, and Titus Barham (who owned the Express Dairy Company, and lived at Sudbury Park, which had been the home of the Copland sisters) donated land at Chaplin Road, which was part of his own dairy farm, as a site for the new Wembley Hospital. Barham also donated £2,000 towards the cost of building it, and he and his wife Florence were active in organising fund-raising events for the project as well.

The foundation stone for the hospital was laid in October 1926, a Board of Management for the hospital was set up, and the new hospital was opened on 2 June 1928 by the Duke and Duchess of York (later King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, who became the Queen Mother when their daughter succeeded to the throne in 1952).

Wembley Hospital, around 1950.

When Titus Barham, who had been the hospital’s president, died in 1937, he left a further £20,000 to Wembley Hospital in his will. But as a charity (a bit like St Luke’s Hospice today), it needed to regularly raise money from other sources. One of the ways this was done was by holding an annual hospital carnival week, with a Carnival Queen, street parade and various fundraising events. Another important source of funds was a “hospital savings scheme”, where by paying contributions of sixpence a month (made by 20,000 of the 90,000 residents in Wembley and Kingsbury in the late 1930’s) local people were entitled to free treatment in the “public wards”.

The Anne Copland Ward at Wembley Hospital, around 1950.

When the NHS was set up in 1948, Wembley Hospital was absorbed into this new service, but although its management had changed, it still provided the same type of care to its patients. Like many other hospitals, as well as training local young women as nurses (under the supervision of the Matron), Wembley also benefitted from some who came from the Caribbean (another 70^th Anniversary! – LINK

 

 

Christmas time in the Children’s Ward, Wembley Hospital, 1950’s

Wembley Hospital’s role diminished over time, especially after the new District Hospital at Northwick Park was built in the late 1960’s, but its site in Chaplin Road is still providing a range of health services for local people (me included!) as the Wembley Centre for Health and Care. So, Happy 70^th birthday NHS, and thank you.

Philip Grant

Acknowledgement

All images are  from the Wembley History Society Collection at Brent Archives.

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