NHS Property Services is celebrating the delivery of 100 social prescribing sites to its partners across the country. One of the final projects to be completed, Ashfield Community Hub in Kirkby in Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, opened in July 2024, and now provides an accessible space for community groups and social prescribing link workers designed with their specific needs in mind.
Between 2019 and 2024, NHS Property Services has delivered a 100-site pilot scheme for Social Prescribing. Social prescribing helps support GPs, who use approximately 20% of their time tackling social issues which could be addressed directly by local community services. This connection can also give patients more agency in their own health outcomes – by making clear the activities which can most benefit their wellbeing.
Non-clinical routes to treatment
Social prescribing aims to provide non-clinical routes to treatment for people with a range of social or health issues, giving them more choice and freedom to receive the support they need. Patients with multiple, complex needs can be referred by their GP to services within their local community, where their needs can be assessed, and appropriate groups, activities, and access to support services, recommended. By addressing the root causes of ill health, and enhancing overall wellbeing, social prescribing has emerged as a powerful tool in the healthcare landscape, and ultimately will take pressure off overstretched GPs and the emergency services.
.NHS Property Services owns and manages 10% of the NHS England estate, which includes many vacant, underused, or run-down spaces that have suffered from lack of investment or footfall. The social prescribing pilot scheme has brought many of these spaces back into use, and includes places to access support services, or places where activities are run and groups can meet. The spaces are often connected to existing NHS services – like the Flourish Wellbeing Hub at Victoria Infirmary in Northwich, Cheshire, or health centres and GP surgeries, like Ashfield Social Prescribing Hub or Wellington Way Community Garden at the Wellington Way Health Centre in East London.
Ashfield Community Hub
Ashfield Community Hub repurposes a disused canteen within the Ashfield Health Centre in Kirkby in Ashfield, with the ambition of creating a welcoming space, that is ‘absolutely non-clinical’, to be used by local groups, and serve people from across Mid Nottinghamshire to support their social wellbeing. Mid-Nottinghamshire Place Team, which manages Ashfield Community Hub, works with its partners – Ashfield District Council, Nottinghamshire County Council, Third Sector organisations, and others – to work toward delivering schemes focussed on integrated working, reducing health inequalities, and ensuring that communities receive the best health and social care.
Patients are referred to the team of social prescribing link workers to identify needs, and create a pathway towards a positive outcome. Nicki Glencross, Service Transformation officer in the Mid Notts Place Team within NHS Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Integrated Care Board, explains: “Loneliness is a good example where a social problem can lead to a health issue. If someone becomes lonely, they may lack confidence to leave their home and, as a result, become frailer, leading to health issues. The social prescribing link workers might identify that a patient’s health outcomes would be greatly improved if their loneliness was addressed. We could introduce them to a suitable group – perhaps a walking group, a craft group, or a chess group – through which they might be able to build friendships and re-establish their place in a community.”
The team works from a variety of locations – for instance in patients’ homes, in leisure centres, and cafés. People who suffer from mental health issues, like anxiety or stress, might not want to meet in a public space, or in their home. A Community Hub like Ashfield can provide that third place – neutral, welcoming, and easily accessible.
Nicki Glencross and the social prescribing link workers operate in partnership with district and county councils, and in liaison with local community voluntary sector groups. If they identify a need that isn’t currently met, then they are able to mobilise to provide it, if possible, with the community hub providing the venue for that to take place. Partnership and co-production are at the core of their operations: “We focused on children and young people’s mental health, and worked with local people to f ind out what they needed, as well as doing insight work with schools and mental health services,” Nicki Glencross explains. “As a result of this, a need was identified for a group to support parents of children and young people experiencing mental health problems. Muddled Minds Community Interest Company, who were involved in the insight work, have now set up this group, and will be one of the first to make use of the Ashfield Community Hub.”
Getting projects of the ground
Ashfield Community Hub’s primary role is exactly this. Nicki Glencross explains further: “Sometimes there will be a need that has been identified and volunteers available to deliver it, but for various reasons – often the cost of venue hire – it can’t get off the ground. Or an existing group is expanding and it can’t find, or finance, the right venue to allow that growth. It’s really exciting and nice to have something that you know is meaningful that has come from an identified need in the community, and to be able to say ‘here you go’, and offer a space at no cost.“
Providing this flexible, free, and bookable space for community groups and networks allows more support to be given, more patients to be connected to social and community support, and more health and social risks to be minimised. By co-locating these services at health centres, the organisations present will not only deliver services which are more convenient for patients, but will also better understand each other’s offer and ambitions, which can encourage collaboration.
Listening carefully to future users is the best way to start any project, and vital to understanding the subtleties of the brief and the requirements of all involved. Early in the project, our team at Collective Works consulted with representatives from Nottingham and Nottinghamshire ICB, Nottingham FM, Ashfield Voluntary Action Group, Property Services FM, Primary Integrated Community Services, Self Help Connect UK, NHS Property Services, and others. This brought together facilitators, users, and the estates management teams, as well as others who currently use the same building. Martin Meltzer, Senior Capital manager at NHS Property Services, and part of the Client team for Ashfield Community Hub noted that ‘early engagement with Alasdair and the team at Collective Works really benefitted the delivery’.
We listened to their needs and wishes over three engagement sessions, with one online, and two in person, at the hub itself. We used these conversations to share our early ideas and fine-tune the brief to ensure that we uncovered the most important aspects of the hub.
A key factor for long-term success
While theoretically any space can be used for social prescribing, creating a welcoming space where people feel comfortable would be an important factor to the long term success of Ashfield Community Hub. By creating a space designed with specific users in mind, our aim was to show respect and value to the community, and ultimately contribute to supporting their wellbeing. Just how many possible uses there were for the space was one of our key takeaways from the engagement sessions. Broadly, these could be sorted into three groups: one-to-one conversations; a co-working base for the social prescribing link workers, and activities and training to support people’s wellbeing. From digital skills tutorials to film screenings, drumming, tea dances, crochet, and yoga, there was little limit to the imagination on what might take place.
The Community Hub would re-use the former canteen of Ashfield Health Centre, which comprised a large and slightly awkward space, with orange columns and few clear zones. Our engagement led us to divide the space into three flexible zones – a welcome point, a central activity space, and a band of working spaces along the bright perimeter wall. Re-use and retention were key strategies in keeping to the budget and minimising both disruption and material use. The canteen space already had large windows along one side, making it light and bright, and a good quality ceiling that could be cleaned and retained.
The original brief also included the conversion of the kitchen into meeting rooms, family rooms, and private consultation space, but following numerous investigations, this was removed from the project scope, instead encouraging more efficient use of existing meeting rooms elsewhere in the centre. The activity zone was central, and so we ensured that it could fit 40-50 people. It has a projector and pull-down screen, and chairs that can be set up for presentations, talks, or screenings. They can be easily rearranged or stacked and moved behind the counter to make space when required.
Three pairs of high-backed sofas create private huddles for team meetings and small gatherings. Each of the chairs has a plug and a USB socket, which allows for use of electronic devices and quiet working, but the environment remains relaxed. Acoustic screens double up as pin boards, and light blue curtains screen the meeting space and the activity area to give privacy and aid concentration. The ambition was to offer a variety of settings that can be intuitively used for the task at hand.
Engagement sessions
In engagement sessions, the idea of retaining and re using the existing counter position sparked enthusiasm. It is a natural place to gather – where the chatter always happens. By recreating a workbench along the line of the canteen counter, we have retained some of that energy, and given the room an easy focus for arriving visitors. This workbench can be used for activities such as teaching, making, or as a co-working area for staff. The lower ceiling above the counter, and dimmable lights, lend it the comfortable draw of a kitchen table, encouraging people to gather around it. Nicki Glencross said: “The work desk is beautiful: bright yellow, and absolutely ideal for sewing machines, sharing IT skills, and crafting. It’s been designed for wheelchair users, and is the perfect height for ‘doing’.”
Although located in a health centre, Ashfield Community Hub is not a clinical space. Martin Meltzer said: “The hub was designed to be very welcoming and homely, eschewing a clinical feel for a more attractive and inspirational space, facilitating visitors’ engagement with social prescribers and activities.”
We wanted to differentiate it from the institutional feeling of the doctor’s surgery. To define this ‘welcoming and homely’ atmosphere we used carefully chosen colour, furniture, and cues from nature. During our engagement sessions, we tested a simple, dynamic, blue and yellow colour palette. We wanted to move away from the orange highlights of the former canteen, with something subtly uplifting and decidedly non-institutional. Pale pastel highlights on the windows make it feel homely, against a soft, terracotta red for the upholstery. The rich blue of the walls and floor is striking, but ultimately the whole comes together to create a calming and comfortable space.
We included established, but easy-to-care-for pot plants – ferns, snake plants, yucca trees – to support the wellbeing of people using the hub. Nicki Glencross says: “What they did that I think is lovely is all the plants that are in there. It’s not just the health benefits of plants filtering the air in a space, but the plants are visually very calming. That actively has a positive effect on your mental health, and will support the services being offered.”
Natural patterns on the glass doors mimic the plants within, and the three areas of the hub have now been named Fern, Yucca, and Lily, reflecting the plants chosen for the space.
Together, our ideas for creating a flexible, adaptable, and welcoming space for a very broad range of activities mark Ashfield Community Hub as a different kind of approach to supporting health outcomes. Its evolving role in supporting wellbeing will grow and change as the requirements of those using it will change, positively influencing the health of those who use it.
Social prescribing for social good
Social prescribing projects like Ashfield are a win-win solution. They make better use of the existing NHS estate, provide good facilities to be used by partner organisations directly available to those who need them, and support people to make positive changes to their own lives. They will ultimately have a positive effect on the health of those that get to use them.
Ashfield Community Hub will fill a gap in services to help residents take control of their health and wellbeing. By designing a space that it is a pleasure to spend time in, but is also easy to access and part of the wider health and wellbeing infrastructure in Nottinghamshire like this, we help people to take ownership and pride in their local community, improve their own health and wellbeing, and follow opportunities for personal growth and development.
Nicki Glencross said: “I hope it ends up being a space where people feel comfortable and welcomed, no matter what the reason for the group they are there for. I want people to leave feeling ‘That was amazing; I want to go back; I enjoyed being there, and it made me feel good.’ Whether it’s a group or an individual, enabling that to continue is the primary purpose of the Community Hub.”
Alasdair Ben Dixon
Alasdair Ben Dixon is a chartered architect and Partner at Collective Works – a practice striving to create responsible and beautiful architecture. He says he has a long-held commitment to find a better way for architects to balance the needs of the wider world with those of clients and stakeholders. He ‘understands the challenges and aspirations of both third sector and public sector organisations’, and has collaborated with a range of charities, community interest companies, advocacy groups, and the NHS, ‘to deliver projects that engage, care, and empower’.
References 1 NHS Property Services celebrates milestone delivery of 100 Social Prescribing Sites across the country. NHS Property Services, 26 April 2024. https://tinyurl.com/2wdy8fer 2 Polley MJ, Dixon M, Hopewell D, Fleming J. Report of the Annual Social Prescribing Network Conference, January 2016. https://tinyurl.com/2cw9hfn