Cransley Hospice to remain at Kettering site with 'very bright future' - including refurb and expansion of at-home service

A five-year negotiation has secured the future of end-of-life services at Cransley Hospice’s existing Kettering site.

The lease of the hospice, in Piper’s Hill Road, was due to run out later this year and Cransley Hospice Trust had been in discussions with Northamptonshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust (NHFT).

Several options were proposed, including a possible move to Northampton, but hospice officials have now confirmed it will remain in the town where it was founded 25 years ago.

As well as keeping the nine-bed inpatient facility its ‘hospice at home’ service will be expanded – and for longer.

Cransley’s founding palliative medicine consultant, Rev Dr John Smith, said: “It’s a very, very bright future. Twenty-five years ago I founded Cransley Hospice. Twenty-five years ago Cransley Hospice didn’t exist.

"For some time now we have had the worry and the fear that Cransley might move away from this end of the county or even not exist but, today, we can say that Cransley has a future, not just for the next 25 years but for many, many generations where we will be able to care for people in the last year of life – and care well.”

A ‘six-figure’ sum will be used to fully upgrade existing facilities for inpatients including adding piped oxygen. Further ‘substantial’ investment will expand hospice care services to help patients not just in their dying weeks, but in their last year of life. Cransley will also offer more day-long stays to manage and stabilise symptoms.

The decision to stay at the St Mary’s Hospital site may come as a surprise to some, following the high-profile campaign to fund a purpose-built facility to cope with growth in the general population and people living longer. But there has been a change of thinking.

Philip Talbot, Cransley Hospice Trust’s chief executive, said: “It all started over five years age when the trust began to engage with a revamped NHS on palliative and end-of-life (P&EoL) service provision going forward.

“The thinking then was that the demand for in-house hospice care would increase in line with population increases and the current facility was not adequate and a new larger hospice would be required within five years (November 2023).

“Meanwhile the NHS integrated care plans highlighted changes in demand for hospice care and the need to amend legislation on P&EoL care to enable new approaches to be taken.

"It seemed obvious to me that what was needed was a review of the situation and further engagement with the NHS to formulate a joint approach to the future, not just for in-patient care, but for all wider EoL care provision within Northamptonshire.”

A formal review took place over the winter of 2021-22 and in February, with a conclusion that evidence revealed end-of-life care across north Northamptonshire would be ‘best served by maintaining an in-house provision on the existing site and upgrading the facilities’.

The new lease is on a rolling five-year term, agreed by the Cransley Hospice Trust board.

Mr Talbot added: “Given the direction of travel for service provision is based on localities, and the need for a local hospice is already proved, I believe such provision will be a relatively permanent feature.”

Throughout 2023, Cransley Hospice has been marking its 25th anniversary with special fundraising events.

Rachel Herrick, director of income generation and communications for Cransley Hospice Trust, said: “We want to get it out there that the hospice is staying. Thinking has changed in the last five years. There has been a change in government strategy and it fits in with our new plans. Local facilities need to be available.

"It’s about giving patients the quality of life, giving them the right information, signposting to the right services. Supporting them to live as well as they can, and the care and support for families after the bereavement.”

Most patients spend 10 to 12 days in Cransley Hospice, with half of the patients going home after receiving treatment.

Paul Humphrey, Cransley Hospice Trust’s chairman, said: “This is fantastic news for the hospice. It helps give certainty for the future, not just to the patients and families who need this service, but for the staff too. I would like to thank our partners and colleagues within the NHS for their engagement and hard work so far and look forward to the successful completion of works to refurbish and upgrade the Piper’s Hill Road facility, with our investment enhancing the delivery of end of life care for the people of north Northamptonshire.”

Crishni Waring, NHFT’s chair, said: “We are so pleased to be continuing this important partnership with our colleagues at Cransley Hospice Trust. The compassionate and high-quality end-of-life care offered at this important north Northamptonshire site is so valuable to our communities, and on behalf of NHFT I would like to send my thanks to all involved on this important journey.”

Dr Smith added: “We will have a hospice with walls and we will have a hospice without walls too. I’m really excited about what’s going to happen in the future.”