This development includes a six GP Practice, community services (including Dentistry, Podiatry, Speech and Language Therapy, Sexual Health and Child Health), sessional consulting and an integrated base for social services and community nursing. In addition it provides affordable key worker flats and street frontage commercial development. At the heart of the new Primary Care facilities being developed in Islington under LIFT (“Local Improvement Finance Trust” - a government initiative designed to bring significant improvements to the delivery of Primary Care in the most deprived areas of the country) the trust were keen to make this a landmark building.
The scheme is on the site of the inadequate building that houses the River Place Health Centre. After a study of the existing structure, it was established that most of it could be retained and the larger functional programme for the new facility accommodated by adding another floor and extending two sides out to the site boundaries. This approach follows the green agenda that underlies the approach to design within LIFT. The health facility is pulled back from the busy Essex Road making room for a tower containing the commercial element at ground level and flats above.
The building is between a Grade 2 Listed Cinema and a row of Georgian houses, with a church at the rear. The existing Primary Care services run in and from the site need to be decanted during the construction phase, but a core element has to remain close to the site, which the team are making possible in the phasing of the works.