Planning Approval Sought For New Inverness Healthcare Centre
24th January 2019
Planning permission is sought to construct a new healthcare and multidisciplinary life sciences centre to serve the Highlands and Islands area and is a collaborative project between NHS Highland, the University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI) and Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE).
Councillors have been asked to give planning permission for a healthcare and life sciences innovation centre in Inverness. The South Planning Applicatiosn Committee meets to decide on Tuesday 29th January 2019.
A 28-bed elective care centre, four operating theatres and day case and outpatient facilities have all been proposed for the new building.
NHS Highland is leading the project to have the centre built over three plots at the city's Inverness Campus.
The health board said it hoped to have the site open in 2021.
For NHS Highland the development will consist of a 28-bed elective care centre featuring four operating theatres and will house NHS Highland's ophthalmology service. For UHI the development will provide a research and innovation centre and will form an integral part of the School of Health within the university. For HIE
the development will provide laboratories and office space as they look to bring a commercial focus to the project.
The building has been designed on a rectilinear footprint and is two storeys in height. It features a clinical area in the central main section with two wings extending out from the northern section at an angle of 120 degrees housing the patient zones and two smaller wings branching out on the southern section at 100 degrees that will host the health innovation and research hub. The primary frontage will be the eastern elevation, facing onto the central avenue that runs through the heart of the campus complex.
The sheer scale of the development, coupled with the need to ensure that all elements within the building are interconnected, means that it has been necessary for the development to combine three of the original campus plots into one larger area. This has resulted in a number of deviations from the original masterplan
including the removal of the landscape buffer strips that separate the individual plots.
The main public entrance to the building is located to the north with car parking split across the overall site. The general parking area associated with the NHS use of the building is to the north with general parking for UHI and HIE located to the south. The service yard area sits behind the west elevation adjacent to the A9 trunk road. In total 245 parking spaces, 25 of which will be disabled spaces, will be provided for the development.
