Building The Future

The ambitious vision of a state-of-the-art clinical rehabilitation centre moves ever closer as the bricks and mortar of the new Defence rehab facility on the Stanford Hall estate take shape in the heart of England. Contractors are now constructing purpose-built units at the 354-acre Nottinghamshire site that will become a beacon of care for wounded Service personnel. The £300 million project for a new Defence National Rehabilitation Centre (DNRC) began with a conversation between the Duke of Westminster and General Sir Tim Granville-Chapman, then the Vice-Chief of the Defence Staff in 2009. “The Duke was leaving service after a distinguished 43-year career in the Reserves. Over the previous two years, he had been involved in mobilising Reservists for Iraq and Afghanistan, and was struck by the very high price military personnel were paying in service,” says General Sir Tim, now the DNRC’s Programme Director. 

The Duke wanted to do something in the medical field for these people and decided clinical rehabilitation was a good way to go. Let’s be clear, though, this project is about what Headley Court has pioneered so well, making sure its legacy endures for another 70 years. It is about preserving the Headley Court legacy by putting it into a 21st century clinical space.

General Sir Tim, DNRC’s Programme Director

Construction will near completion in 2017, the 70th anniversary of when Headley Court, the Surrey country home once owned by a Governor of the Bank of England, was commissioned as a single Service, officer and air crew unit as part of the RAF’s string of hospitals throughout southern England. It developed into an all-Service, all rank facility that carried out inspiring and ground-breaking work. Headley Court will be missed but, as its doors close, a bespoke 21st century medical facility will open.

FROM HEADLEY TO THE DNRC

The new site will be strategically positioned in the heart of the nation, an hour from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, which houses the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine, and was the main centre for severely injured personnel returning from Afghanistan and Iraq. Stanford, a 35-bedroom Grade II-listed mansion, has a colourful past as the former home of entrepreneur and philanthropist Sir Julien Cahn. He would entertain up to 80 house guests at weekends, ferrying them the three miles from Loughborough station in a fleet of black Rolls Royces. But the building does have a military connection as Sir Julien, whose fortune came from a furniture empire in the 1920s, allowed it to be used as a 70-bed hospital during WWII. The original house will be restored and used for training and administration.

TRULY GROUND BREAKING

Reaching the £300 million target will mean the latest technology can be employed in the perfect environment for treatment and recovery. The Stanford Hall estate will become the only establishment in the world offering complex trauma, neurological and back to life care (which includes prosthetics) all under one roof. Elsewhere, the gardens will be landscaped to provide vital sensory input to recovery programmes, and it is even planned that the rehabilitation capability will offer a Computer Assisted Rehabilitation Environment (CAREN) system – a virtual reality diagnostic and therapy capability.   A specialist gait laboratory, meanwhile, will improve mechanical analysis and exercise pathways.

For all the latest developments at  the Defence National Rehabilitation Centre visit www.thednrc.org.uk