Work begins on Europe's largest young people's mental health facility

Published: 30-Oct-2014

St Andrew's begins work on Northampton residential building for young people with mental illness, autism and learning difficulties

St Andrew’s has begun constructing a new residential building for young people with mental illness, autism and learning difficulties in Northampton.

The ground was officially broken on the new £45m building, FitzRoy House, earlier this month in a ceremony attended by the Lord Charles FitzRoy, a Governor of St Andrew’s and whom the building is named after.

Designed by P+HS Architects and to be constructed by Galliford Try, FitzRoy House in Cliftonville Road will bring together adolescent services from two sites and will be the largest facility of its kind in Europe. It will provide care to young people from across the UK, and alongside 110 residential beds, will include a new facility for education, sports and therapy and a number of landscaped courtyards.

Currently, St Andrew’s provide beds for 90 young people, so FitzRoy House will provide an additional 20 beds, helping to meet the increasing demand for mental health services for young people across the country.

Chief executive of St Andrew’s, Gil Baldwin, said: “When it opens in 2016, FitzRoy House will be a completely bespoke service providing the very best care and educational facilities for young people who have quite complex mental health needs. As well as a new tailor-made facility for St Andrew’s College, our school, which is already rated ‘outstanding’ by OFSTED, the new building will provide smaller wards and enable our staff to provide better, more-individualised care for our patients.”

Dr Enys Delmage, consultant adolescent forensic psychiatrist at St Andrew’s, added: “This fantastic project will mean a huge amount for the adolescents we care for every day. Ensuring we provide access to facilities that are tailor-made for our young people with complex mental health needs is vital. We have had a heavy amount of clinical design input into this bespoke new facility so we are tremendously excited about this new development.”