Chester and Wirral NHS Trusts on lookout for strategic partner

The Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust is looking for a strategic partner to provide architectural, construction, engineering and inspection services estimated to be worth between £40m and £120m over the next 10 years.

Acting for both itself and Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, the trust has published a contract notice through the Official Journal of the European Union to provide the services over an initial 10 years, with an option to extend for a further five years.

The trusts are looking for a private sector partner to provide “an intelligent estates strategy function that will support the trusts’ clinical strategies to enable service change, improve quality of care for patients and drive efficiency in the trusts’ operations”.

It is thought that the services could include masterplanning, estates rationalisation, capital programme planning, raising finance and investment, strategic service transformation planning and the procurement and project management of services relating to new projects.

Key priorities named in the contract notice from the Wirral trust include developing an affordable use of its Clatterbridge site and development of the Arrowe Park site.

For the Chester trust, the West Cheshire Acute Hub, a £13.1m extension and refurbishment of the existing A&E department and surrounding areas, is listed as a key priority together with projects which include the improved use of land currently used for parking, identification of new locations for non-clinical services and developing a new use for the Women and Children’s Building.