Paddington campus to be on three sites

It is understood that the team behind the scheme, which is working on a fresh outline business case for the delayed project, favours two sites on land occupied by St Mary’s Hospital and a third owned by developer Chelsfield.

Under the proposal, the three bodies behind the plan – the St Mary’s trust, the Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Trust and Imperial College – will each have a separate site.

According to documents prepared by the project team, the three areas will be:

• The Acrow site above South Wharf Road – this will house the Royal Brompton;
• The triangle site, south of the Acrow site and facing South Wharf Road and Praed Street, which will house a national heart and lung institute for Imperial College;
• The site planned for Richard Rogers Partnerships’ Grand Union office block, north of the canal. This will house St Mary’s, a women’s and children’s hospital and residential facilities.

The documents reveal that one element of the scheme, the Royal Brompton, will be up and running by 2011, although another estimate put it at 2016.

The team is pressing ahead with the fresh outline business case even though the government’s review of the scheme has still not been published.

The review, carried out by the Department of Health, the Treasury and the National Audit Office, is expected to be critical of the scheme’s conception. The project’s first outline business case was published in November 2000.

The chief of one of the trusts, Gareth Goodier of the Royal Brompton, quit last week after a little more than a year in the post.