Woking & Sam Beare Hospices (WSBH) and Woking Borough Council are pleased to announce they have agreed a loan facility of up to £6 million from the Council which will go some way to enabling its development of a long term, sustainable presence in the local community.

WSBH services are currently working at full capacity serving over 1,000 patients annually both in the community and from their hospices in Woking and Weybridge. The Hospices are however coming under increasing pressure – a problem expected to heighten as people live longer, making increasing demands on the service and as they need the ever more complex End of Life Care Hospices offer.

Against this background the Hospices, led by Chief Executive Nigel Harding and with the full support of the Trustees conducted an extensive strategic review of future service provision needs. At the core of the review was the uncompromising determination to deliver excellence in everything the Hospices do including delivery through in-patient units, day units, at care and residential homes and within patients own homes.

The review produced many recommendations which now form a challenging Strategic Plan for the Hospices. The plan includes two recommendations fundamental to the future sustainability of the Hospices in the community:

• to change the organisational infrastructure, moving to a single in-patient unit
• to grow capacity in day care and community care services to meet future demand and align service care provision to national guidelines

The loan from Woking Borough Council has enabled the Hospices to act quickly on these recommendations which will help to transform End of Life Care in North West Surrey. The financing will help to create a new Hospice and centre of excellence with a 20 bed in-patient facility to be located in Denton Way, Goldsworth Park, Woking leading to:

• a cutting edge, state-of-the-art hospice for the North West Surrey community
• the re-location of beds from the Sam Beare unit to the new Hospice in Woking creating a focused centre of community care, day-care and counselling excellence in Weybridge improved delivery and quality of in-patient care and accommodation
• better prioritisation of patients with greatest needs
• expansion of day-care support, short-term therapeutic interventions and carer support provision
• cost and efficiency savings to be re-invested in further service improvements

Underpinning this work, the Hospices will work even more closely with all its valued donor partners – large and small who together make such a massive contribution to sustaining the on-going work of the Hospices in the community.

WSBH Chairman, David Perry said: “Our Hospices in Woking and Weybridge provide excellent care and we continue to develop and improve the quality of support we offer both in the hospices and, just as important beyond them into the community. This will continue seamlessly over the next three years while the new facility is commissioned. Our challenge is to ensure a sustainable Hospice Care provision, ready to adapt to changing demands on services and to provide the kind of care that people deserve. This loan from Woking Borough Council is great news and allows us to take the first steps to address these challenges and to further enhance our End of Life Care.”

Cllr John Kingsbury, Leader of Woking Borough Council, said: “The Council considers the hospices a vital part of our community and I am delighted we are able to assist them in securing a sustainable future in the best interests of current and future residents. At the same time as supporting the Hospice, we will underpin our own financial strategy to enable us to protect Council services for local people.”

The Hospices will provide regular progress updates through the design and refurbishment phases of the project through to the opening of the facility which is anticipated during the second half of 2016.

To find out more about the project, public meetings have been arranged for Wednesday 4th December at 7pm, HG Wells Suite, Woking and on Thursday 5th December in Weybridge Hall at 6.30pm. Further information on the Hospice website www.wsbhospices.co.uk