Buildings rise from natural contours

Recently named Kingfisher Court – after 150 staff, service-users, and members of the public made their suggestions, and a majority felt ‘particularly engaged’ with a bird theme – the new facility is a key element of a £100 m, five-year ‘Transformation Programme’ through which the Trust is aiming to significantly improve the efficiency and quality of its services across Hertfordshire, North Essex, and Norfolk. As HEJ editor, Jonathan Baillie reports, HPFT’s goal is to incorporate into Kingfisher Court ‘world-class, state-of-the-art facilities’ that will help it achieve its ‘vision’ of becoming England’s best provider of mental healthcare and specialist learning disability services.

Hertfordshire Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust (HPFT) provides mental health and specialist learning disability services across Hertfordshire, and specialist learning disability services in North Essex and Norfolk. Its 2,800 staff care for over 30,000 service-users annually across over 80 locations.

In outlining the ‘vision’ for a five-year ‘Transformation Programme’ initiated in 2010, the Trust said its priority was ‘to ensure that our service-users continue to achieve the best recovery they can, with all the latest evidence-based support we can offer’. It is against this backdrop that the HPFT has worked, over the past four years, with construction company, Medicinq Osborne, and P+HS Architects, to plan, design, and build, the 86-bed Kingfisher Court facility on the site of the former Harperbury Hospital in Radlett. Medicinq Osborne had already, I discovered when I visited the site, and met with project director, Mike Trigg, established an excellent working relationship with the Trust when it bid for the contract. In May and September 2009 respectively it successfully completed a new 32-bed inpatient Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) and Low Secure unit, known as Oak and Beech, and a 16-bedded Child and Adult Mental Health Services (CAMHS) facility, Forest House, both under ProCure21, about 300 yards from Kingfisher Court on the Kingsley Green site.