Torbay Council has approved Rowcroft Hospice’s plans to enhance its care with the addition of a 60-bed dementia and complex needs care home.
Designed by long-established architectural firm PRP, the development will enable Rowcroft to ‘meet the wider care needs of the community, as well as provide a valuable income stream to support the hospice’s future care’. New community facilities will include allotments, a village hall, and a nursery, creating opportunities for recreational activities and providing ‘intergenerational connections’.
According to PRP, new contemporary buildings will ‘respond to the character of the retained properties, reflecting their different architectural qualities while respecting their scale and setting. Routes created through the landscape seek to provide clear visual connections across the site, celebrating the retained properties and extending their setting into the landscape to enjoy the beautiful trees and amenity spaces’.
The development will meet net zero carbon targets in operation through the use of ground source heat pumps and photovoltaic panels.
Rowcroft Hospice CEO Mark Hawkins said: “We are incredibly proud to care for our community and want to ensure that specialist, quality end-of-life care is available to everyone who needs us, irrespective of diagnosis, circumstance, or background.
“We have spent time listening to the opinions of our community to ensure our care evolves in a way that will best support everyone who needs us in the future and we feel confident that these plans deliver on this. It is wonderful to have the backing of the Torbay Council planning committee and we look forward to delivering on our plans over the next ten years.”
Clare Cameron, architect & director in PRP’s later living team, said: “Set amongst an extensive collection of trees and two grand houses of architectural note, this was an exciting opportunity to enhance and extend an existing hospice. The designs are founded on creating an environment that offers a purposeful way of living by providing an accessible and intergenerational series of opportunities in the landscape. We were delighted to work collaboratively with Rowcroft Hospice, to design a scheme that will provide a valuable and long-lasting resource for the local community.”
