The first small part of a much larger whole – the ‘cornershop’ opens with more restaurants, cafes, a health club (with retrofitted first floor river view pool), a basement cinema along with some more exclusive offers all opening throughout 2025 – lots happening down by Temple tube.
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What fast food, supermarkets, ATMs and airports have refined, what healthcare still needs to adapt, and how the benefits can be maximised in emerging Health on the High Street models.
Where we started
Today we took part in a self check in demonstration and workshop, as part of our work designing an outpatient service in a former Wilko store in a shopping centre. A fitting place, because the High Street has spent decades refining how people arrive, queue, check in and move on. Supermarkets, fast food outlets, pharmacies, ATMs and transport hubs have shaped these encounters into something smooth and instinctive. They have done this not just through better screens, but through clearer spaces, more intuitive layouts and thoughtful sightlines…
(Read more here:)
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Across towns and cities, former shops stand vacant, their interiors hollowed out by the shift to online retail. These are the places where many healthcare services will soon be located. Most now accept the logic of this move. Locating healthcare in former retail settings improves accessibility, creates new anchor tenants in struggling high streets, relieves pressure on acute hospitals and supports the left shift of care closer to communities, as advocated by the NHS Long Term Plan. Economically, socially and clinically, the case for relocation is sound.
But relocation alone is not enough. Retail buildings were not designed for care. To unlock their potential, we must apply the same craft and precision that retail designers bring to their environments. This means developing a design toolkit as robust as retail’s, not a fixed set of rules but a way of thinking critically about how people experience these spaces….
(Read more here:)
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Fleet Architects are proud to be approved as a supplier on the NHS London Procurement Partnership (NHS LPP) Estates & Facilities Consultancy Services Dynamic Purchasing System (DPS) from 2025.
We have been appointed for:
Category 1: Architecture Services and Architecture-Led Design Team Services
Category 9: Estates Strategy and Business Case Development Services
The NHS LPP DPS is accessible to organisations across the UK, and we have been approved to deliver services in the following regions:
Greater London
North East
North West
Midlands
East
South East
South West
Scotland
Wales
Northern Ireland
To find out more about NHS LPP and how your organisation can access services through the DPS, visit:
https://www.lpp.nhs.uk/
Image: Fleet Project – Berrywood CAMHS relocation, extension and refurbishment for NHS Northamptonshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust. – Photographer: Fernando Manoso
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Fleet is collaborating with City St George’s, University of London, to develop a comprehensive estates strategy. This initiative involves conducting a series of workshops with the deans of various schools, beginning with the School of Communication and Creativity, which now includes the renowned Urdang Academy. The Urdang Academy, celebrated for its excellence in performing arts education, specialises in training students in musical theatre and dance. The strategy aims to produce a pathway document to guide the university in addressing current and future needs, particularly following expansions such as the integration of St George’s Medical School.
The discussions will consider how the university’s unique geographic setting, straddling the City of London, the London Borough of Islington, and now extending south of the Thames, shapes its footprint and influences the identity of its schools. This dynamic location enables the university to draw on diverse urban contexts, but it also presents challenges in aligning the needs of these distinct areas within a cohesive strategy. Estates play a pivotal role in this process, acting as both an enabler and a limiter—supporting growth, innovation, and collaboration while requiring careful management of space, resources, and infrastructure to meet strategic objectives.
Leveraging their extensive experience in complex estates planning within the NHS and acute care settings, Fleet is well-placed to address challenges faced by City St George’s. These include managing capacity constraints, navigating urban limitations, and fostering inter-departmental collaboration. Fleet’s expertise will be instrumental in shaping an effective estates strategy, ensuring the university’s facilities enable its ambitious growth while reflecting its distinctive identity across its expanding geographic footprint.
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Fleet Architects is delighted to be appointed to lead the redevelopment of the Cherry Trees site into a Specialist Learning Disability and Autism Day Centre for the London Borough of Tower Hamlets (LBTH). This vital project will transform an underutilized school building into a modern, purpose-built facility that will support adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and profound and multiple learning disabilities (PMLD). We are committed to delivering a design that reflects the needs of its users while maximizing the potential of the existing building to create a sustainable and inclusive environment.
Designing for adults with learning disabilities and autism presents significant challenges, particularly in retrofitting a former school building to accommodate the varied and sensitive needs of its users. The facility will serve two distinct groups: individuals with PMLD, who often require accessible and mobility-supportive spaces, and individuals with ASD, who may exhibit complex and challenging behaviours. Features such as a hydrotherapy pool, sensory rooms, calm spaces, and physiotherapy facilities are essential to creating an environment that fosters comfort, therapeutic engagement, and dignity. Fleet Architects brings extensive experience in designing for hydrotherapy uses, which will be integral to the success of this project.
In addition to addressing the limitations of the existing building, Fleet is developing the landscape design in-house with our dedicated landscape design lead. This approach allows us to blur the threshold between indoor and outdoor spaces, using the external environment to augment and expand the building’s capabilities. By carefully integrating landscaping with the overall design, we aim to create a seamless and supportive environment that enhances the experience for users while meeting the Council’s sustainability and net-zero carbon objectives.
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The first draft of the Article before publishing in Fortis – A candid letter to the incoming Minister for Health and Social Care:
Dear Wes,
I’m writing regarding the mandate your new government has for a fundamental reset of our ailing NHS estate. Here is my 10-point prescription for an ambitious approach that is as strategic as it is deliverable:
Older Health Building Notes (HBNs) allow for professional interpretation. Emerging guidance lands more like rules and frankly that’s a different beast, one which stifles creativity and flexibility. Can we get back to concise, well-researched documents for clinicians and designers to use as their starting point?
I do think that standardisation is part of the answer – but it’s not ALL the answer. There’s no need to reinvent things endlessly, but hospitals are not drive-thrus; they will always be a contextual response to local geography and health need.
Healthcare architecture is blessed with veterans who have worked through building cycles and know what was successful, and why. Talk to them, use them! Between the late 1970s and early 1990s, 150 nucleus hospitals were built that remain the backbone of acute estate: this was standardisation done well.
Nearly every acute NHS site has become encrusted with carbuncular extensions hurriedly procured with flash-sale funding. Study the palimpsest of the original site and strip things back to basics. Acute sites demand urban design-level thinking and a rigorous development control plan (DCP).
New hospitals get votes, but old hospitals can be revitalised if less complex services are released into the community. Think of the Health on the High Street campaign, where redundant shops are being repurposed to provide integrated community health hubs where they’re needed most.
Hospitals and healthcare systems are urban-scale systems, and key organs of our towns and cities. Working with local authorities as key partners in designing integrated services will accelerate patient access, reduce environmental impact and improve wellbeing.
Never again should a politician wave a promise of new hospitals, irrespective of clinical needs and strategy. Long-term planning must happen beyond political meddling, ensuring equity of coverage and consistency across a project’s lifetime, which will likely last longer than a party’s term in office.
The aftermath of the pandemic looms over an already struggling service in buildings that are not fit for purpose. The environment where care is delivered is critical for recovery – none more so than in mental health. Standard must improve for patient safety, dignity and care.
Visit an old, failing hospital – there’s at least 150 to choose from – and look at the staff room or, if they even exist, the staff changing area. NHS staff are the most valuable resource we have: providing enough space to make a cup of tea or take a shower after a gruelling shift is not a luxury, it’s a basic need.
Focus less on available capital, and more on on-costs, added value or operational savings. As unfashionable as it may seem, there is a lot to learn from the PFI programme and how a new model for public and private partnership can fuel the economy and help save our NHS.
Good luck with the new job – sincerely,
Jaime Bishop
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Geraldine Joined Fleet in August 2024 as a Senior Architect having spent 7 years with Hawkins Brown on the redevelopment of the Printworks in Canada Water into an innovative mixed-use commercial and cultural destination, Hallsville Quarter Phase 3: A mixed use retail quarter delivering 620 new homes, shops, restaurants, workspace and public realm as part of the Canning Town Masterplan and the DfMA toolkit, pattern book of flat type products for a housing developer client.
Educated at Nottingham and London Met, Geraldine joins fleet 4 years post part 3 registration bringing a wealth of experience in housing and hospitality to the Fleet team.
(More to follow)
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Labour banishes the phrase “levelling up”
While many have expressed their dislike for the phrase, criticising it as a trite example of the characteristically un-grown up politics of recent times, few can argue that the need to address inequalities in the UK doesn’t persist. The Health Foundation reports that ‘Nearly 2 in 5 adults (18%) on the lowest incomes report having ‘bad’ or ‘very bad’ health, compared with 2 in 100 (1.7%) on the highest incomes’. Contrary to what many believe it’s not just a north south divide. Some of the most stark inequalities can actually be found in and around London and the South-east, with divides more closely aligned to areas beyond the metropolitan fringes where the new government will need to focus regardless of geography.
Yesterday we paid a visit to long ongoing project of ours, the heritage renovation of a pair of buildings within the ‘Kazbah’ dockside collection of the vestiges of Great Grimsby’s , great past. Grimsby is persistently records in the worst 10% of many poverty and deprivation measures in the UK.
Though the fishing industry has significantly declined the town is still the home fish processing, and a thriving fish market. Though it isn’t a fishy smell which you first notice in the warren of Victorian Steets annexed from the town proper. The docks boast a number of the most renowned fish smokers in the UK, with some still adhering to the process with protected geographical status, such as Alfred Enderby’s smoked Haddock. With the long faded grandeur, the Associated British Ports (ABP) imposed isolation and the oaky smell in the air, it’s an incredibly atmospheric place, and increasing attracts film crews.
One of the buildings we have been working on, starting in the pandemic and finishing in the wake of the cost of living crisis, is the Grade II listed Peterson’s smoke house. With all 10 of the cowls which enable the chimneys (‘ouses) to draw smoke, now lovingly restored, it will not be long before the building is smoking again. Our project and other ambitious ventures, like spectacular proposals to re-open the derelict ice factory as a venue and arts centre, the growth of north see wind, and plans to reopen the marina to the docks, will have an impact though, unfortunately, the amazing new stadium for the Mariners has been shelved. The disconnect of the docks from the town is an ongoing issue which needs to be challenged. Grimsby is not alone, after all Liverpool is only just awakening to the potential to address the river with Everton leading the way.
We paid a visit to Alfred Enderbys, as we always do, to catch up with Patrick Salmon (Yes!) and update him on the project. We also try to pick up some of his amazing smoked haddock and salmon to sneak back on the train. We served up the salmon on blinis to the office and the brewery, Five Points, who share the building with us. Enderby’s salmon really isn’t comparable to anything you will find in a supermarket and we urge you to pay them a visit, yes you can buy online, but you also get to explore the Kazbah. While new businesses are sprouting in this triangle of land which time ignored the more people who know about it, and pay a visit, the greater the momentum will be for it to regain its role in the greater prosperity of the town.
Quite a challenge for returning MP, Melanie Onn, and her landslide of colleagues, just don’t call it levelling up.
Fleet Team : Benedict Spry, Kai Xin Tan, Richard Henson, Jaime Bishop
Project Team : Bernie Bone of BB Heritage Studio, QED Structures, SWECO, YOU&ME
Thanks to project sponsors:
Historic England
Architectural Heritage Fund
Nation Lottery Heritage Fund
North East Lincolnshire Council
Associated British Ports
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