Groundworks started this week on a new £10.8m specialist dementia care facility in Harrogate.
Vida Healthcare’s third facility in the town, to be known as Vida Court, is expected to create up to 250 new jobs when it opens in summer 2021.
The operator was established seven years ago to challenge and change perceptions about care homes in the UK and has already achieved two ‘Outstanding’ ratings from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) for its two existing dementia facilities in Harrogate.
The new building will provide 100 bedrooms across eight individual ‘houses’, with specialist features including a large communal area designed to imitate a village environment with its own shop, coffee shop, cinema, hairdresser, events room, and easy access to outside spaces.
Designed to deliver very-tailored and individual care programmes, it will cater for people as young as 40 and will adopt the successful tiered design from the company’s most-recent home, Vida Grange, with plenty of light and points of interest, large internal walking areas for residents, level access to external gardens, as well as multiple communal spaces, health, wellbeing and sensory features.
It will also incorporate significant workspace areas to provide a Vida Academy training centre for staff and a new headquarters facility for Vida’s head office personnel, currently located elsewhere in the town.
Vida has challenged all areas of care provision to the extent that their care home environments are almost unrecognisable from outdated predecessors
Designed by Leeds-based Den Architecture, the building works will be delivered by a Yorkshire-based team comprising Projex Building Solutions, which has advised on all three Vida facilities and will provide project management, cost consultancy and health and safety advice; with the build contract being undertaken by Caddick Construction, part of Knottingley-based Caddick Group PLC.
Vida Healthcare managing director, James Rycroft, said: “We launched Vida Healthcare with a view to challenging the perception and services of care homes in the UK.
“And, in the seven years since our first home, Vida Hall, was conceived and built, the company has enjoyed a growing reputation as providing a centre of excellence for dementia care in the UK and particularly for being able to help with very-extreme or complex diagnoses.
“We are very proud of this achievement and want to continue to put Harrogate on the map and be at the leading edge of specialist care provision in this country.”
Phil Tomalin, managing director of Projex, adds: “Vida has challenged all areas of care provision to the extent that their care home environments are almost unrecognisable from outdated predecessors.
“It means that Harrogate will continue to take a leading role in dementia care provision in this country.”
