Sarah Townsend
Housing provider Calico Homes, with architecture studio Brock Carmichael, has drawn up designs for 90 extra care apartments and a community hub on four acres of derelict land at Burnley General Hospital.
A public consultation on the £14m proposals launches today and runs for a month. The scheme would be “the first of its kind” in Burnley, according to Calico, and is intended to provide specialist assisted living accommodation in a neighbourhood setting to improve quality of life and reduce isolation.
The apartments would be targeted primarily for people aged over 55 who require extra support and proximity to the hospital, but wish to maintain as much independence as possible.
Updated
Tuesday, 16th March 2021, 1:58 pm
The target was agreed at a board meeting of the region’s integrated care system (ICS), at which one hospital boss warned that the scale of the task meant “difficult decisions” would have to be made about the services on offer in different localities.
Board members signed up to the savings tally – which amounts to five percent of total NHS expenditure across the patch – after hearing an estimate that the collective deficit of healthcare organisations in the area could be as high as £340m.
The financial issues facing the region long predate the pandemic. In March 2020, just as the full impact of Covid began to be felt, the forecast budget shortfall already stood at £277m – and that was even after planned savings of £163m had been factored in for the year ahead.
Luckily, her daughter Ruby will be working alongside her on the same shift. Jacqui has been working as a critical care nurse at East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust for 30 years. And after being inspired by her mum during the Covid-19 pandemic, Ruby decided to follow in her footsteps and switch studying for her business and economics degree at the University of Liverpool to nurse training. The 19-year-old is now a first year nursing student who regularly takes on bank shifts as a healthcare assistant on the critical care ward at ELHT. “I was shocked when Ruby told me she wanted to be a nurse, said Jacqui. It’s not an easy career, especially at the moment, but I hope she continues to enjoy what she does in the future.