Plans for new training building at Hereford County Hospital

A new three-storey education centre is planned to go alongside Hereford County Hospital.

Wye Valley NHS Trust, which runs the county’s main hospital, has put forward a planning application (number 242825) for the new building, on what is currently a car park on the northwest corner of the hospital site.

Consolidating the trust’s educational work in one place, the planned facility “will bring contemporary teaching facilities for medical professionals to Hereford, and provide students with a healthy, well-considered learning environment which will help to attract and retain staff”, a statement with its application says.

The project is “vital” for it to maintain and expand training for future healthcare professionals locally, “as well as the local community, who will have access to the facility as a resource”, it adds.

With a roughly triangular footprint, the planned building would feature a “state-of-the-art simulation ward area”, a lecture theatre with flexible layout, classrooms, study pods, IT suite, library, kitchen and office space.

Clad in brick and timber with a “harmonious and regular frontage”, it would be comparable in height with the nearby Stonebow Unit, and lower than the main hospital building.

An entrance plaza with cycle shelter and a small garden would occupy the strip of land immediately to the east, while further landscaping would be installed in front of the small Victorian chapel opposite.

A new sustainable heat and power unit is currently being built immediately to the northwest of where the training building will go.

“Options were explored to link into the new adjacent energy centre but the requirements were not compatible for the building we are providing,” the new application says.

Comments on the proposal can be made until January 12.