Construction underway on two Northumberland projects under £72million mental health services overhaul

As previously reported, Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust (CNTW) is currently working on the CEDAR programme (Care Environment Development and Re-provision) to upgrade its estate.

It will result in some services and jobs moving into Northumberland from other council areas.

The programme features three principal elements:

The creation of a new integrated mental health and learning disability medium-secure centre of excellence at Northgate Hospital, Morpeth;

The reconfiguration of the award-winning children and young peoples’ mental health/learning disability Ferndene Unit at Prudhoe, to improve existing accommodation and establish medium-secure facilities for children and young people;

The reconfiguration and re-provision of mental health adult acute inpatient services for Newcastle and Gateshead at St Nicholas’ Hospital’s Bamburgh Unit in Gosforth.

The Northgate scheme, together with a bid for 134 homes to help fund it, received planning permission in January 2020, followed by the Ferndene works in June.

Providing an update at the Tuesday, January 12, meeting of Northumberland County Council’s health and wellbeing committee, Tony Railton, from the CEDAR programme team, reported that construction had started on the Northgate site in November 2020.

The target for completion is December 2022, with patient services starting in March 2023.

The refurbishment and extension work has also started at Ferndene, as of the start of this month, with the first phase due for completion in late October 2021 followed by the second phase in June 2022.

Mr Railton said: “The good news is that all the money is sorted out, the Government is fully supporting that, the clinical models are all sorted out, and for the staffing models, we’re now entering a phase of formal consultation to comply with law, but the work we have done with staff so far has been very positive, we have had good feedback from our trade union colleagues and we don’t expect that’s going to cause any major difficulties.”

The meeting also heard that the rationalisation of the Northgate estate means that the trust is now looking at selling more land, potentially for further housing.

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