Caddick Construction has completed the £26.5m replacement Moya Cole Hospice, formerly St Ann’s Hospice, at Heald Green south of Cheadle Royal. As Place North West reported, the building handed over in June and is now operational, standing next to the original 1971 facility it replaces.
What has been built
27 private en-suite inpatient bedrooms, each with direct access to outdoor terraces and landscaped gardens. A central “Village Street” containing a café, retail space and a salon, all open to the community rather than sealed off. An adjoining “Being You Centre” providing outpatient therapies, rehabilitation and counselling. The site sits within the Cheadle Royal conservation area.
The design decision that matters
Private en-suite rooms with direct garden access is not a luxury specification in a hospice. It is the whole point. A 1971 building was designed around ward-based nursing convenience, in an era when dying in a shared bay behind a curtain was normal. Fifty years of practice has established that dignity, privacy and the ability to have family present without disturbing anyone else changes the experience for patients and for the people sitting with them.
The Village Street is the other notable choice. Hospices are places most people avoid thinking about until they need one, and that avoidance makes fundraising harder and referrals later than they should be. A café and shop that local people use for ordinary reasons puts the building into the community’s normal life rather than at its edge.
Who paid
The hospice itself funded the project, with £2m raised through the “Build it Together” campaign. Caddick contributed £95,000 to the fundraising. PRP Architects led the design, having been commissioned back in 2014, supported by Avison Young on planning, Genr8 Management Services on project management, TRP on structures, Gardiner & Theobald on cost and SCP on highways, with Gateley on legals.
Twelve years from architect appointment to handover. That is what delivering a £26.5m charity-funded building looks like when the money has to be raised alongside the design.
The wider point
Dave Saville, Caddick’s regional managing director, said “the vital care and support this development will provide the community has always been at the forefront of our work”. That is the sort of line contractors always produce, and in this case the building supports it.
Hospice care in England runs substantially on charitable fundraising rather than guaranteed statutory funding, which means capital projects like this one depend on a community deciding it wants the building enough to pay for it. Heald Green now has 27 en-suite rooms because enough people in Greater Manchester did.
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