Hospital £23m mental health inpatient unit opens

A brand new £23m inpatient unit has opened in a hospital to support people struggling with severe mental health issues.

Chaddesley House, at St Ann's Hospital in Poole, near Sandbanks has been purpose-built by Dorset HealthCare to increase capacity and enhance services for local people needing 24-hour care and intensive treatment.

The building, which will be ready for patients from the end of May, is the first result of a £70.6 million investment in Dorset's mental health services from the Government.

A new high intensity unit for children and young people will open in Bournemouth this summer, while further improvements to the St Ann's site will be introduced over the next couple of years.

Work on the two-storey unit, which will host two specialist adult wards, began two years ago.

The first floor Chine Ward will relocate female patients from a listed building elsewhere on the site which limits modern development, offering improved facilities and an increased capacity of 14 beds.

On the ground floor, Haven Ward – divided into eight-bed male and five-bed female psychiatric intensive care units – will also add to bed numbers on the site, as well as making space elsewhere at St Ann's for extensive refurbishment and modernisation works, due to be completed over the course of 2027/28.

Dorset HealthCare chief executive, Matthew Bryant, said Chaddesley House will allow the trust to "provide the highest level of care to more local people".

Natalie Forrest, chief programme officer of the New Hospital Programme, added: "Chaddesley House marks an important milestone for both Dorset and the New Hospital Programme.

"This modern new facility will help more people receive high-quality mental health care closer to home, in an environment designed to support recovery, wellbeing and dignity."

The next Dorset HealthCare New Hospital Programme project – a £17.9 million eight-bed high intensity environment unit for children and young people in Alumhurst Road, Bournemouth – is set to open in June.

It will mean seriously ill young people can be cared for locally instead of being sent for specialist treatment elsewhere, potentially hundreds of miles from family and friends, which will greatly improve their chances of recovery.