The Harborne Hospital

Construction work has commenced on a new £100m specialist hospital facility in Birmingham, which will provide high quality acute care to private patients in the region as well as extra capacity and access to specialist facilities for NHS patients.

University Hospitals Birmingham (UHB) has undertaken a competitive process to facilitate the development of a private patient centre on its site that will create additional NHS capacity. HCA Healthcare UK and University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust are working with Prime to develop the hospital.

The 138-bed specialist hospital facility is being built on the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham campus. The £100m hospital will include a radiotherapy unit and state-of-the-art operating theatres. It will be equipped with the latest technology to provide some of the most complex surgical and medical procedures and treatments across cancer, cardiology, neurology, hepatobiliary, urology, orthopaedics and stem cell transplantation.

This will give patients access to a level of acute private healthcare not currently available to the 500,000 people in the region who have private health insurance or who want to self-pay for their care.

M&G Investments has acquired a long leasehold interest in the site and will finance the construction of the hospital with HCA UK entering into a long-term underlease with M&G upon building completion. The 14,728sqm facility is being built by VINCI Construction UK.

Prime secured planning permission for the 8-storey building in April 2018 and financial close was achieved in February 2019, moving the project forward into the construction phase which is expected to be completed in 2022. The capital is provided by the M&G Secured Lease Income Fund, which generates long-term, contractually inflation-linked cashflows by investing in ‘income strips’ – a real estate transaction whereby the property interest reverts to the counterparty for a nominal sum following a long lease term. The Fund has provided capital to universities, local authorities and the corporate sector and has a portfolio including committed developments of £732m. This is the Fund’s first transaction in the healthcare sector.