Oxford John Radcliffe Hospital theatre development plans submitted

Plans for the building at the John Radcliffe Hospital have been submitted to Oxford City Council

A hospital has submitted proposals for a new complex of operating theatres to help meet patient demand.

Plans for the building at the John Radcliffe Hospital were sent to the city council by Carter Jonas on behalf of Oxford University Hospitals (OUH) NHS Foundation Trust.

They include seven elective theatres with "associated infrastructure, landscaping and parking".

The 7,541 sqm (24,740 sqft) building would be built on a staff car park.

In its staff travel plan document the trust specifies an "insufficient capacity of elective recovery space within the hospital".

The new facility would provide "purpose-designed, high throughput, ringfenced elective surgical capacity in a new surgical hub".

It would also feature a "hybrid theatre, giving the trust a leading edge in being able to perform procedures requiring radiology intervention during surgery".

The plan is also for it to connect to the theatre suites in the existing West Wing building.

The block will be built on one of the existing staff car parks

The car park it would be built on is currently adjacent to the Trauma Building to the east and the MRI department buildings to the south.

Mark Holloway, chief estates and facilities officer at OUH, said: "The trust has submitted a planning application for a new development to house additional operating theatres on the John Radcliffe Hospital site, and the proposed scheme is at a very early stage.

"The trust will continue to review and consider all opportunities and options to establish how we can best improve our estate to help support the delivery of services for patients."

In response to the plans, Oxfordshire County Council said there were concerns over the impact of the reduction in parking, with car parking at the hospital "already over-subscribed".

It said the site needed to be looked at "holistically to determine why so many members of staff need to drive to the site and how this number can be reduced through providing better options to travel using active and sustainable modes".

Oxford Civic Society said the loss of 132 parking spaces was "serious".

"The site is badly served by public transport and is frequently congested on site and on the surrounding roads," it added.

Headington Heritage opposed the plans, saying the trust had a "long track record of endless, incremental expansion resulting in a housing shortage, catastrophic traffic, which damages health, wastes time, and contributes to the climate emergency, and creating flooding via vast hard surface car parks".

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