New £15 million Derbyshire health centre in grounds of historic hospital opens
A new £15 million health centre in the grounds of an historic hospital has opened to patients after eight years of work.
Babington Health Centre, in the grounds of Babington Hospital in Belper, off the A6, has now opened to patients.
Derbyshire Community Health Services NHS Foundation Trust said some patients began being treated at the new £15 million facility on Monday, August 17.
The new facility will provide a one-stop-shop for treatments short of hospital and A&E intervention, including wound care, community nursing, midwifery clinics, speech and language therapy, podiatry (issues relating to feet), physiotherapy and phlebotomy (blood tests).
It contains 15 consulting rooms, six treatment rooms and a health education group room, along with other facilities.
The plans for a health centre were pushed forward in 2018 when the now defunct Southern Derbyshire Clinical Commissioning Group agreed that the near 200-year-old beloved but outdated Babington Hospital should be closed, with services shifted elsewhere.
Belper Clinic, which had shared the site, was demolished to make way for the new health centre.
A previous plan was to build the new health centre on the former Thorntons factory site in Belper, alongside the new county council’s Ada Belfield care home and library, but that scheme was pulled.
Plans to build a health centre on the current plot of the Belper Clinic were approved by Amber Valley Borough Council in September 2023 after five years of planning delayed by the pandemic.
Initial plans had been for a £5.9 million facility with 1,540 square metres of space, before being increased following the decision to stay at Babington, with the price increasing to £10 million in 2019 and an increase to 2,900 square metres.
That plan was reworked in 2022 after severe flooding risks were raised, with the new plan seeing part of the facility built on stilts and with no health services based on the ground floor, and the public entering at the first floor.
Parts of the Babington Hospital site are in Flood Zones three and two, with three being the highest level of risk, and the site had experienced flooding in November 2019 which led to patients being evacuated.
Plans for the new health centre had intended to see 100 jobs linked to the site, with most seeing employees based in the community instead of at the facility, with the former Babington site having 395 staff.
The former Babington Hospital, a health facility since 1948 and workhouse from 1838, is now in the final stages of being closed down.
The opening of the new health centre was billed as the tipping point for the final use of the hospital, which was being marketed for sale by Avison Young, on behalf of NHS Property Services, with a recommendation to turn it into 70 apartments.
That listing for the four-acres site is now no longer available.
Debbie Bowskill, senior wound clinic nurse, said: “We are settling in well and it feels like our new home. Until now, our weekend appointments needed to be in other locations but now we can run them all from here.”
On an average day, the Babington wound clinic service currently sees around 15 patients with the potential to see 20 or more in the future
The trust said: “When the doors opened at the new Babington Health Centre it marked the start of a new era.
“Babington Health Centre is a major investment in health services for Belper, delivering a modern and welcoming space that will benefit local people for years to come.
“It marks the end of an era in healthcare with the old former workhouse hospital site being decommissioned and healthcare services moving just next door into the £15 million new purpose-designed health centre.
“It will be a focal point for meeting the health needs of local people for many decades to come.”