Building a new home on the Allison House site – moving people to alternative homes, demolishing the old home and building a new one

What would this mean in practice?

We would analyse options, prepare feasibility studies, and develop a proposal for the construction of the new care home.

This would include securing capital funding, planning consents and procurement of specialist architectural advice.

Move people who are living at Allison House into alternative care home accommodation, either on a temporary or permanent basis, depending on customer choice.

Demolish the existing building.

Design and construct new home.

Staff the new home.

Move the people who wish it back to the new home.

Cost

Building a new 70 bed care home would cost in the region of £18.5m.

If the alternative accommodation is made available at our rates the fee rate would be the agreed local authority framework rate for people who resided at Allison House.

The new home would not be available for around 18 months so we would incur additional staff-related costs.

Approximate timescales

• Write Business Case and Executive Report requesting approval to invest in constructing a new home on the Allison House site – 3 months
• Tender for architect – 3 months
• Produce concept design – 6 months
• Obtain Planning Permission – 6 months
• Tender design and build contract – 6 months
• Design – 12 months
• Move people to other homes – 12 weeks
• Construction – 12 to 18 months
• Commissioning and occupation of new home – 4 months

Assumptions

Planning Permission would be granted for a new home of sufficient size to be viable.

Advantages

A new home that meets modern standards would be available at Allison House for existing and future residents.

Disadvantages

This option would require people to move more than once if they wished to return to the replacement home. Their health and wellbeing may be negatively impacted by this disruption and active measures would need to be taken to minimise these risks. Best practice would be followed to help people to prepare for any move and familiarise themselves with their new home. For these reasons, in practice, a relatively small proportion of existing people living at Allison House are likely to move to a replacement home when it is completed.

People may not be able to move together as a group into alternative care home accommodation. This could break up friendship groups.

The consequences of this option for staff are complicated as they would not be required at Allison House until the new home is complete, which could be 18 months. We would incur additional staff-related costs, and it may not be possible to retain staff.

The existing site is somewhat constrained, which would restrict its scale and layout. This in turn could impact on the economic viability of the home and its ability to operate successfully.

Initial assessment

Building a new care home on the site after the existing building is demolished is not currently considered to be a desirable option because it would cause considerable disruption to people who live at Allison House as they would all have to move once and those that wanted to return would move twice. Equally, the site is unlikely to readily accommodate a larger care home, a key requirement of economic viability.