NHS trust to sell headquarters in relocation plan

Staff will be relocated from Duncan Macmillan House in Nottingham, healthcare bosses say

An NHS trust has said it plans to relocate staff from its Victorian-built Nottingham headquarters and sell the premises.

Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust said it intended to put Duncan Macmillan House, in Porchester Road, on the market early in 2025.

An email to staff, seen by the BBC, said the trust's leadership, administration, and communications teams had already moved to the Highbury Hospital mental health facility in Bulwell, which now served as its new "official HQ".

Trust chief executive Ifti Majid said, in a statement, Duncan Macmillan House "no longer served modern working practices and was underutilised".

Mr Majid, who joined the trust in December 2022, added that the trust recognised the building's "cultural significance" and would be considering how it could "celebrate its legacy".

The Duncan McMillan House building was part of the Nottingham Borough Lunatic Asylum, which opened in 1880 and then became part of Mapperley Hospital when the NHS was established in 1948.

Mapperley Hospital closed in 1994 and its buildings were repurposed.

'Duty to taxpayers'

According to the staff update, teams will be communicated with about relocating.

It added some teams would be moved out of Duncan Macmillan House on an interim basis so the trust could make "efficiency savings to support [its] financial recovery programme".

Mr Majid said: "Since I joined the trust, I have always wanted to move Trust HQ on to a busy patient site to increase the opportunities for executives and members of the Trust HQ function to meet those who use our services, hear direct feedback and to engage more easily with colleagues.

"The potential sale of Duncan MacMillan House (DMH) has been under consideration for several years as it no longer serves modern working practices and is underutilised.

"Taking this into consideration, and also that we have a duty to make best use of taxpayers' money, the decision was made to put the building on the market from early 2025.

"The sale of a building such as this can often take several years to complete, and in the meantime, we will carry out consultation exercises in order to move our teams out of DMH and into other bases."