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Have your say on proposed improvements to health services in Lutterworth

This consultation is now closed.
Click here to read the report of findings.

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Click the play icon to watch the video below which explains why and how we propose to improve health services in Lutterworth.

The NHS in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland heard from local people in Lutterworth and surrounding areas, and anyone else with an interest, about proposals to maximise access to health services.

To respond to the changing needs of people, we propose to significantly expand the number of health services available in Feilding Palmer Hospital by changing the way we use the space in the Hospital.  We would permanently take out the inpatient beds and provide this service at home, in a care home, or another community hospital.  We would then use the space to provide approximately 17,000 outpatient and diagnostic appointments each year.

The consultation was your chance to find out more about what is being proposed and have your say about important health services in Lutterworth.  Your feedback will help us to understand what the proposed changes would mean for you and your family and help us to make a final decision.

About this public consultation

This public consultation was led by NHS Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland Integrated Care Board (ICB). The ICB is the organisation responsible for buying (commissioning) and making decisions about healthcare services in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland on your behalf.

From as far back as 2016, we have involved and worked with our patients, service users, carers, staff and stakeholders on proposals in Lutterworth.

This public consultation and the proposals reflected what people told us they needed. It provided an opportunity to have a say on the proposals so that the people of Lutterworth can have a refurbished hospital that provides more outpatient and diagnostic care closer to home. Full details of the public consultation can be found in the full consultation document.

Why have we proposed changes?

There are lots of reasons health services need to change and improve in Lutterworth:

  • The population’s health and care needs are changing. Overall, people are living longer and there are fewer people dying from conditions such as cancer and heart disease. However, the number of people living with more than one health condition has increased and this puts pressure on health and social care services.

  • The population in Lutterworth is growing. There will be a significant growth in the population of Lutterworth over the next few years, with an estimated 2,750 homes being built. A younger population of families are expected to move to the area. They will require outpatient (appointment in a hospital or clinic that you do not stay overnight for), diagnostic (test or procedure to identify a disease or health condition) and GP services, rather than intensive treatment and rehabilitation provided in an inpatient bed, often required by older people.

  • Feilding Palmer is no longer fit for the 21st Century. Fielding Palmer Hospital is poorly laid out, with no single sex wards and shared bathrooms for males and females. Disability access is restricted in some areas and the building is not suitable for inpatient care (overnight stays). There is no privacy and dignity for patients, and corridors are narrow and unsuitable for trollies and bed movements. The building does not meet the required infection prevention and control standards. There is also inadequate ventilation and internal damage to the roof.
Photo of a ward corridor at Feilding Palmer Hospital that demonstrates the poor infrastructure, as it is narrow and impossible to move beds around.
Example of poor infrastructure in ward corridor. Narrow and impossible to move beds around.
Photo of a corridor with male and female toilet and shower facilities at Feilding Palmer Hospital, demonstrating a lack of privacy and dignity.
Lack of privacy and dignity - corridor with W.C. shower facilities (male and female).
Photo of a ward at Feilding Palmer Hospital, demonstrating the lack of privacy and dignity for patients.
Lack of privacy and dignity for patients in the ward area.
Photo of Jack and Jill shower room for both males and females accessed through different doors at Feilding Palmer Hospital, demonstrating lack of privacy and dignity.
Lack of privacy and dignity with Jack and Jill shower room for both males and females accessed through different doors.
Photo of the dirty utility at Feilding Palmer Hospital, where there is no designated clean area.
Dirty’ utility and no ‘clean’ area.
Photo of a vent at Feilding Palmer Hospital. This is inadequate ventilation for a hospital, with a vent far less powerful than the vent in a standard family bathroom.
Inadequate ventilation for a hospital, with a vent far less powerful than the vent in a standard family bathroom.
  • More services are being provided at home or in the place people call home. Since the pandemic, more care has been provided at home or in a residential home. This is helping people regain some of their independence and avoid the decline in physical abilities that can happen in hospital. Palliative care (end of life care) is also provided at home, in a care home or in a LOROS hospice. We would continue this service as it has allowed people to stay where they feel most comfortable – surrounded by memories and the people they love, rather than in hospital.

  • Fewer people from Lutterworth and immediate surrounding areas were using inpatient beds at Feilding Palmer Hospital. Inpatient beds were closed temporarily during the pandemic. They have not reopened as they do not meet infection prevention and control standards. The number of people using Feilding Palmer Hospital for overnight stays pre-pandemic had declined year on year. More residents of Lutterworth and South Blaby chose other community hospitals rather than Feilding Palmer. A higher number of people are also choosing to receive care at home.

  • There are long waits for diagnosis and treatment. We have longer waiting lists and people living in and around Lutterworth are travelling out of the area to receive a diagnosis and treatment. This could be done locally by changing the way we use Feilding Palmer Hospital. This would reduce the traumatic burden of travelling, reduce the carbon footprint and shorten waiting times.

  • Our community services are not joined up. People tell us that communications and relationships between services need to improve, particularly when people transfer from one service to another. More services at Feilding Palmer, which is next door to two GP practices and a pharmacist, would help with some of the communications problems that exist.

  • Inpatient care was expensive. Even with only 10 inpatient beds in Feilding Palmer Hospital, minimum staffing requirements must be met. This means the nurse-to-patient ratio at the hospital was similar to that of an Intensive Treatment Unit, which is a special ward providing intensive care for people who are critically ill.

The video below (also shown at the top of the page) further details why and how we propose to improve health services in Lutterworth.

To watch the video, click the play icon.

What changes do we propose?

This public consultation was seeking your views on proposals to change the use of Feilding Palmer Hospital.

To respond to the changing needs of people, we propose to keep Feilding Palmer Hospital open and significantly expand the number of health services available in the hospital by using the space in a different way.

We would:

  • Permanently take out the inpatient beds and provide this service at home, in a care home, or another community hospital.

  • Use the vacated space to increase the number of outpatient services – where people visit a hospital for a diagnosis or treatment, but do not need to stay overnight. Approximately 17,000 outpatient and diagnostic appointments would be provided each year in a refurbished Feilding Palmer Hospital.  This means people would not have to travel a long way into places like Leicester.  Over 25 branches of medicine covering a whole range of conditions would be diagnosed and treated locally.  This would include skin, hearing, balance, eyes, mental health, reproduction, breathing, lungs and many more.

  • Patients would have easier and shorter travel times, and convenient parking closer to the hospital, making it simple to access the building. It is estimated that the number of miles travelled by patients would reduce by 200,000 per year.

  • Provide as many of the services as possible as a ‘one-stop shop’, reducing the number of times a patient needs to attend appointments.

  • Provide more inpatient care (overnight stays) at home or in the place people call home. The residents of Lutterworth would be supported so they avoid illness or a deterioration in their health by being assessed at home.  People living with a long-term condition would be supported to manage their own care and avoid an urgent hospital admission.  When there is a requirement for an urgent and immediate response this would be delivered by skilled specialists either in the patient’s home or a community location. Where there is a need for a hospital stay people would be returned home where possible or into a community facility, where they would be rehabilitated to give them every chance of recovery and getting back to living independently. People who are sadly at the end of life would be supported at home, in a hospice or in a care home.
Photo of the front of the Fielding Palmer Hospital building

The information below details the two key proposals that we consulted on:

Service we are consulting on: Increase the number of outpatient activity providing in Lutterworth.

How the service is provided now:

The following services are provided at Feilding Palmer Hospital:

  • Abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) screening
  • Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) support
  • Dermatology
  • Dietary
  • Echocardiogram (echo)
  • Heart failure
  • Mental health
  • Musculoskeletal (MSK) physiotherapy
  • Out of hours
  • Paediatrics (children)
  • Parkinson’s care
  • Psychiatrics
  • Psychiatric nurse
  • Pulmonary and cardio rehabilitation
  • Speech and language therapy – adult and children
  • Stoma
  • Walking aid clinic


Other diagnostic and outpatient services are provided outside of Lutterworth, e.g. acute hospitals.

How we propose to provide the service:

In addition to the 17 services currently provided at Feilding Palmer hospital, we would add new services, providing approximately 325 patient appointments per week.

In the first phase, we would add the following 5 services:

  • Additional dermatology services
  • Gynaecology
  • Ophthalmology
  • Trauma & orthopaedics
  • Urology


We would later add the following 5 services:

  • Cardiology
  • General internal medicine
  • General surgery
  • Respiratory medicine
  • Rheumatology

Service we consulted on:

Permanently take out the inpatient beds and provide more inpatient care at home or in the place that people call home.

How the service is provided now:

The following services were provided pre-pandemic at Feilding Palmer:

  • 10 inpatient beds, including palliative care suite


The following care homes provide beds:

  • Wood Market House (42 beds)
  • Lutterworth Country House Care Home (66 beds)
  • Hunters Lodge (beds 17)
  • Brook House Care Home (41 beds)


The following organisation provide care at home:

  • Home Instead Rugby
  • Help At Home (St Marys House)
  • Helping Hands Market Harborough


There are also a number of care and nursing home in the districts of Blaby and Harborough.

Leicestershire County Council provide the following services:

  • Home Assessment and Reablement Service (HART)
  • Crisis Response Service


Community hospitals with inpatient beds are located in:

  • Market Harborough
  • Hinckley

How we propose to provide the service:

The 10 inpatient beds would close permanently and the space would be used to provide outpatient and diagnostic services (shown above).

We would continue to use the care homes, care at home providers, Leicestershire County Council services, and community hospital inpatient beds shown in the left column.

We would continue to increase the number of beds at our other community hospitals. With existing and proposed growth, this would provide a total of 52 additional beds. This would increase our intermediate care offer (services provided to patients, usually older people, after leaving hospital or when they are at risk of being sent to hospital) to support reablement, rehabilitation and recovery. 

How we propose to fund the improvements

The investment to pay for these changes and improvements is £5.8 million.  This would fund the internal refurbishment of Feilding Palmer Hospital.

How people had their say

The public consultation ran from Monday 23 October 2023 until 11.59pm on Sunday 14 January 2024.

We asked what you thought about our proposals to improve services.

We invited you to attend some drop-in events, to complete a questionnaire online, or to complete a paper copy.

There was an easy read questionnaire available, and the option to request a questionnaire in additional formats, such as other languages. You could also ask for some support to complete a questionnaire.

If you have any questions about the consultation, please contact us:

  • Telephone: 0116 295 7572
  • Write to:
    Freepost Plus RUEE–ZAUY–BXEG
    Lutterworth consultation, Leicestershire and Rutland Integrated Care Board,
    Room 30 Pen Lloyd Building
    Leicestershire County Council
    Leicester Road, Glenfield
    Leicester LE3 8TB

Follow us on social media

For the latest news on this consultation, follow us on:

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Consultation events

We held two face-to-face drop-in events earlier in the consultation: one at the Lutterworth Sports Centre and another at Wycliffe Rooms. We also held weekly drop-in events at Lutterworth Library.

Key documents

Click the document title to open it in a new page.

If you require an an accessible version of any of these documents, please call 0116 295 7572 or email llricb-llr.beinvolved@nhs.net.

Pre-Consultation Business Case Appendices

Toolkit

What happens next?

All the feedback people have provided has been independently analysed and evaluated. A report of findings has been produced.

The report of findings will be carefully considered to inform any decisions that the ICB make. 

Further information about the outcome of the consultation, including the improvements that will be made, will be posted on our website.

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