Camden approves BDP’s £150m Great Ormond Street scheme

BDP’s £150m entrance building for Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) has been given the green light by Camden council.

The new clinical building will provide care for young people with rare and difficult-to-treat cancers, helping alleviate pressure on the hospital’s existing facilities, some of which date from the 1930s.

It will include cancer wards, cancer day care, new theatres and intensive care units allowing specialist teams can work more closely together.

New imaging equipment and a specialised chemotherapy pharmacy will also be created to ensure the hospital keeps pace with world leading cancer care practice.

It will also contain a new school for patients at ground floor level and a new hospital entrance, replacing the current glass-covered walkway which leads off Great Ormond Street.

Sisk has already been appointed as main contractor and has drawn up detailed plans as part of the planning application outlining how it would build out the scheme on the highly constrained site. 

Cost consultant McBains and medical equipment specialist MTS Health are also on the project team with Turley on board as planning and heritage consultant.

Nearly 130 objections were lodged against the scheme, which will significantly reduce daylight for nearby properties.

One local group said the hospital’s community engagement had been “totally inadequate” and the council would be demonstrating a “catastrophic” failure to ensure a proper consultation if the scheme was approved.

But the planning officer’s report said the new children’s cancer centre could not be provided in a smaller building and would provide significant public benefits that outweigh any perceived harm to the site’s surroundings.

GOSH is now set to work with the council and the Greater London Authority to secure full planning permission so that the decision notice can be issued. 

The job represents the fourth stage of an ongoing redevelopment plan at GOSH. A third phase by Stanton Williams was completed in 2019.

Work, which had originally been slated to finish this year when BDP won the job six years ago, is expected to take three years to complete.