Marking the end of traditional shared dormitory style mental healthcare wards in Liverpool
Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust is forging ahead with plans to create a modern state of the art mental health facility on land at Mossley Hill, Liverpool, which the Trust owns. This new site paves the way for the end of dormitory wards in the city.
We update this page regularly with news and pictures as this exciting new development progresses. You can also see artists’ impressions of what the finished building will look like in 2025.
The new 80 bed Mossley Hill service will eradicate traditional shared dormitory style mental healthcare wards by providing:
- Single bedrooms with en suite bathrooms to promote privacy and dignity
- Therapeutic light and airy environments that include activity areas
- Facilities that promote recovery such as family visiting and multi faith spaces
- Access to safe garden areas.
Mersey Care’s Chief Executive, Prof Joe Rafferty CBE, said: “This project allows us to give the people of Liverpool what they need – the very best care in a modern, therapeutic environment with single en suite facilities and easy access to gardens and open space.
“Our current inpatient estate has been identified as a limiting factor in service users’ recovery. More than that, by delivering better buildings we’re also setting newer and higher standards in mental health care for everyone.”
The new facility will provide a modern, therapeutic environment for patients to rest and recover from their crisis episode. The state of the art setting extends to the grounds with gardens, trees and facilities such as car charging points.
The 80 bedded facility will be at the centre of a range of inpatient and community mental health services for Liverpool.
Public engagement on the project had been held over several years, with service users, local people, stakeholders and the wider healthcare community.
In 2021 a competitive tendering process took place overseen by Liverpool and Sefton Health Partnership. Construction firm Graham were chosen as build partner because of their experience with numerous projects in the health sector. The site architects are Gilling Dod and they have worked with service users, carers and stakeholders to create the modern, airy designs for the new facility.
Mersey Care’s Trust Board approved a revised outline business case setting out the scheme in more detail and this was accepted by NHS England and Improvement. In August 2022, HM Treasury and the Department of Health and Social Care approved the next stage of the scheme and work began on site. There has been a gradual relocation of services from the site over several years to other new or improved facilities, with all remaining inpatient and community mental health services moving off the Park Avenue site in 2021. Despite Mersey Care’s best efforts to maintain the existing buildings the old site had become no longer fit for purpose.
The old hospital site has now been demolished except for the historic Mossley House mansion building. Demolition experts recycled around 95 per cent of the salvage and buildings were crushed for re-use on site as future building materials.
A further public engagement exercise, held online and advertised in local venues, confirmed that the majority of respondents wished to keep the name ‘Mossley Hill’ for the new service.
Staff and service users were asked to choose names for parts of the site. Names based on pioneering local figures were selected for the new wards: Braddock, Archer, Roscoe and Wilkinson. The new Oasis Café recalls the name of the food outlet in the original hospital.
Along with Trust governors, local politicians and our construction partners, Mersey Care’s Chair Rosie Cooper held a symbolic ‘ground breaking’ event on site in February 2023. This gave stakeholders chance to see the work at first hand and discuss progress on this important project.
Our partners Graham are working with the community regarding employment during the building work. There was an initial jobs fair in June 2023 for construction roles on site. They are reaching out to local stakeholders and educational establishments to offer work experience, intern roles and other training to local people. Graham are trialling an immersive mental wellbeing pod for their workers to access in early 2024: the first initiative of its kind.
Residents are updated with newsletters and from the Trust’s social media account. We recognise that construction work such as this can cause concerns and everything possible is being done to manage its effects, for local people and the wider environment.
The new facility will be completed in 2025.
- The redevelopment falls under the banner of our ‘Liverpool 2 Project’ as it will be the second of a new generation of mental health facilities created for the local communities of the city in recent years - the first being Clock View Hospital at Walton north of the city.
Mersey Care is always keen to work with stakeholders. Our recent construction projects have been shortlisted for awards for co-production with our patients and service users as well as recognising design in the community. We also work closely with our construction partners on what’s called ‘social value’. These are activities and projects where the local community, schools and local employers are closely involved, so that we contribute to the area and where possible, employ local people and use local contractors.
For Mossley Hill, our construction firm Graham are working with the community regarding employment during the building work. There was an initial jobs fair in June 2023 for construction roles on site. They are reaching out to local stakeholders and educational establishments to offer work experience, intern roles and other training to local people. Graham are trialling an immersive wellbeing pod for their workers and operatives to access practical mental health care in early 2024: the first initiative of its kind.
In spring 2024, Graham have two under 18 local students booked in for site-based work experience placements with their project management team. Graham are working with the City of Liverpool College, Design, Surveying and Planning T-Level students for placements. They are also attending networking ‘Meet the Professional’ events, including at St Francis Xavier’s College, Liverpool.
Mersey Care continues to link in with local leaders and we are preparing a community drop in event this summer. We keep locals up to date using social media and a regular newsletter drop in the area around the building site.
In spring 2024, colleagues from the Zero Suicide Alliance worked with Grahams’ wellbeing leads to deliver a toolbox talk to the 100+ workforce . They provided five steps that people can take to improve their mental health and wellbeing, particularly given the tragically strong relations of serious mental health issues in some sections of the construction work economy.
They used the SEE, SAY, SIGNPOST model that is in the Zero Suicide Alliance training. Since the talk was delivered, positive feedback has been received, with more of the workforce reaching out for support and supporting their colleagues. Mersey Care hosts the Zero Suicide Alliance: you can learn more about the ZSA here and take the free online training, some of which you can complete in just five minutes.
Mossley Hill - the site's journey
