Chester and Wirral NHS Trusts on hunt for strategic partner

The Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has published a contract notice through the Official Journal of the European Union for services estimated to be worth between £40m and £120m over the course of 10 years.

Acting for both itself and Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, the trust is seeking a strategic estates partnership encompassing architectural, construction, engineering and inspection services over an initial 10 years, with an option to extend for a further five years.

The trusts are seeking “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”.

This 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 document from the Wirral trust include an affordable use of the Clatterbridge site and development of the Arrowe Park site.

For the Chester trust, the West Cheshire Acute Hub – a £13.1m extension, remodelling and refurbishment of the existing A&E department and surrounding areas – is prioritised along with projects including the improved utilisation of land currently used for parking, the identification of new locations for non-clinical services, and redevelopment of the Women’s and Children’s Building following relocation of these clinical services into the site’s main building.