North Bristol NHS Trust required outline planning permission for major new acute and community hospital facilities at Southmead Hospital, as well as full planning permission for various related enabling developments.
Tetra Tech secured outline planning permission and undertook the Environmental Impact Assessment for the redevelopment and associated enabling development
The Trust required permission to pursue its business case for a Private Finance Initiative (PFI) process. It also needed full planning permission for related enabling developments, such as new Learning & Research and Pathology facilities that were being displaced by the new hospital.
Through constructive pre-application dialogue with the Local Planning Authority (LPA), we negotiated a position where a proportionate scope of technical work was undertaken. This made sense given the outline nature of the proposals and the need to leave scope for the PFI bidders to develop proposals in more detail later. It also meant the LPA and others could properly consider potential impacts of development proposals while the Trust kept professional fees to a practical minimum.
The terms of the outline permission we secured provided the PFI bidders with sufficient flexibility to allow for flexibility in the final detailed proposals.
Securing full permissions for the enabling developments meant the Trust could proceed with the certainty of knowing their essential services would be maintained during the main hospital building’s construction.
Our proactive approach to managing both the planning process and stakeholder engagement ensured a major EIA development proposal took only four months from application registration to a committee resolution to grant planning application.
