Planning advice and support to facilitate the delivery of a range of improved health care facilities has been provided by DLA for over 20 years. With an ever-aging population and advances in research and development of treatments that are available, the need for new and reconfigured facilities continues to grow. Such examples include us assisting with the provision of consolidated and expanded general hospitals such as that found at the Royal Hospital in Derby. In this instance we had to collocate two facilities while keeping the ‘blue light’ facility in full operation for the existing hospital. So, we are not strangers to a complicated operational phasing or planning puzzles. In other instances, we have provided master planning and detailed planning advice on the delivery of new facilities such as those found at the CircleHealth Rehabilitation Hospital (the largest in the UK at the time this award-winning building was constructed) at the former Pebble Mill at One site or the new Birmingham Teaching Dental Hospital in the Edgbaston Medical Quarter. At the other end of the spectrum of health care provision, we have advised on the provision of local dementia care facilities and GP walk in centres.

In addition to advising on the direct delivery of health care facilities we advise on master planning of sites for scientific research and development. Frequently, campuses have fractured funding streams so robust frameworks need to be provided so decisions taken today about where to site a building and its ancillary infrastructure, do not fetter investment, research and delivery of health care opportunities in the future. As one of the leaders of campus planning in our field, we are experienced at responding to the shifting agenda provided by segmented funding and therefore the delivery of an overall vision for a site. Our teams of master planners and planners apply a detailed knowledge of the legislative system in order to deliver both short term objectives / buildings and in other instances decades of medical healthcare or essential scientific research and teaching.