£6m plans revealed for Tain health centre
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NHS Highland has submitted a planning application for permission to build a new health centre at Tain at a cost of around £6 million.
The application, for land to the west of Craighill Primary School in Craighill Terrace, also includes associated site works, landscaping and an "energy centre", which would supply heat to the new facility.
The proposed health centre at Tain would be two-storey and just over 1,500 square metres.
It would provide a total of 12 GP consulting rooms and three treatment rooms for the two local GP practices. It would also include a four-room dental suite and the community staff would have two clinical treatment rooms, three clinical consulting rooms, two clinical interview rooms, a podiatry treatment room and a physiotherapy treatment room.
The project is being supported by capital enabling funds from Scottish Futures Trust (SFT) and will be developed through the SFT hub initiative, which helps to address smaller projects in the community that cannot stand alone. This initiative makes it possible for a group of smaller projects to be bundled together into a single project that provides value for money in the current financial market.
Locality general manager, Alison Phimister,explained that current facilities for patients, staff and visitors using Tain Health Centre were inadequate, as were the current arrangements for providing dental services in Tain.
Ms Phimister said: “Both of these facilities fail to meet modern healthcare standards and neither of them complies with various statutory requirements, including requirements of the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA).
“The existing health centre is over 35 years old and is in poor physical condition and the existing dental facilities fail to meet the current demand, are in poor condition, do not provide the required decontamination facilities and have poor access.
“The new facility will provide a much better environment for patients and staff.”
A previous planning application for a health centre in this location was approved in July 2007, but the new proposals are for a different building on a smaller part of the site.
A separate application has also been submitted by a private developer to build a care home next to the new health centre.
Project manager, John Bogle, explained that the new health centre is being provided as part of a bundle under the hub initiative with two other health centres in Grampian.
He said: “This will be the first hub revenue bundle in Scotland. We are pleased that this new method of funding traditional capital projects has made it possible for us to proceed with this project at a time when capital is becoming scarce.
“And we are very grateful for the financial and technical support we are receiving from the Scottish Government to bring this long awaited project to fruition.
“The Tain team has been working closely with colleagues in NHS Grampian to share resources and learning on this new concept for delivering a bundle of projects across two health boards.”
Forres and Woodside are the other two health centres in the bundle with Tain Health Centre.
