Lilliput Surgery

5 GP Practice

Built in 2008

GP area 797.45 SqM

Pharmacy

Incredible views over Poole Harbour from majority of GP consulting rooms

Lilliput Surgery – Sandbanks, Poole, Dorset. A new Medical Centre.

NHS facilities to be constructed in the fourth most expensive place in the world.

This was going to be a challenge!

Having been selected by the practice to embrace this challenge we scoured the workable catchment area for the GP’s. We identified a limited number of possibly affordable sites and at each we were constantly thwarted by lack of funding residential competition and loss of car parking. It was thus we had to resolve the predicament by designing a building on the existing site that the GP’s occupied which regrettably meant we had to relocate the GP’s to a temporary site whilst we constructed their new building. One of the main challenges having been forced into this solution was securing NHS commitment from a financial perspective which we eventually achieved.

On the shores of Poole Harbour and in a high value residential area we were bound to encounter substantial opposition to a large building on four floors. We worked with the patients and supportive counselors, politicians and local community which demonstrates that a positive support of 1400 letters to the planning office works! Rather than the usual dozen or so NIMBY esque letters of objections that so often sway a local planning committee and planning officers. The property is designed to fit in the local architecture in the Le Corbusier style as a marine residence.

This project embraced strategies needed by the practice to allow retirement and long term security for the younger GP’s to join on a flexible basis.