A South London hospital will open a specialist centre for kidney patients as part of a major revamp. Wandsworth Council has approved plans for a new renal unit at St George’s Hospital, in Tooting, to transform kidney care for patients across South West London and Surrey.
Renal services currently provided at St George’s and St Helier Hospital, in Sutton, will be moved to the unit under the plans from St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (SGUH). The move aims to improve care and dialysis services for kidney patients.
Application documents said the two existing renal units, which serve a population of around 2.7 million people, suffer from long-term underinvestment. This has resulted in the buildings ‘not being fit for purpose and neither service is as efficient as it should be’, according to the documents.
Visualisation of the main hall in the unit
(Image: BDP Architects/St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust)
The council’s planning committee unanimously approved plans for the new unit at St George’s on January 14. Conservative councillor Guy Humphries praised the design of the building at the meeting.
Ahead of the meeting, Dr James Marsh, group deputy chief executive for St George’s, Epsom and St Helier, said: “This is an exciting, once-in-a-generation opportunity to improve the quality of kidney care to people in South West London and Surrey. Our proposal would bring together the best of our two excellent renal services in a state-of-the-art, purpose-built renal hospital at St George’s – to deliver the vast majority of care close to people’s homes.”
The unit will be built on a former car park at St George’s to the south east of the Atkinson Morley Wing. It will be a six-storey building with 89 beds across inpatient wards, including higher acuity beds, day care beds and bariatric beds. It will have 24 acute dialysis stations, a surgical ward, offices and a courtyard garden with seats for staff and visitors.
The documents said: “The new specialist centre will bring expert staff together onto one site and help the trust to provide 24/7 care for kidney patients on long-term dialysis requiring inpatient care and for patients who need more complex care such as a kidney transplant.
“Focusing specialist renal care in one location will also open up more opportunities for patients to take part in clinical trials, and for clinicians to gather more valuable data regarding effective treatments. The development of a purpose-built unit means that resources can be used more effectively and provide more patient beds and increase capacity for treatments.”
Council officers ruled the scheme will represent a ‘meaningful and much-needed expansion of critical healthcare infrastructure’ in Wandsworth.
The scheme is part of the trust’s 2021-2031 estate strategy, which outlines an eight-phase plan to replace existing buildings at the hospital. Phase zero involves the construction of a new intensive care unit, which was approved by the council in August. The new renal unit will follow as phase one of the plan.
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