Work has begun on a £5 million new health and social care training centre at the University of Wolverhampton after contractors for the ambitious project were appointed.

The new Marches Centre of Excellence in Health, Allied Health and Social Care at the Telford Campus will provide state-of-the-art training facilities for the next generation of key workers.

The Centre, which has received £3.5m Growth Deal funding from the Marches Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP), will enable students to gain hands-on, real-life experience of the profession they will enter and ensure they have the skills and knowledge to benefit employers. 

Birmingham-based Overbury has been appointed as the contractor to lead the refurbishment and fit out of existing space in the Angad Paul Building at the Priorslee campus. Also involved in the project are architects Broadway Malyan, Faithful & Gould as the client-side project manager and Gleeds as Project Management and cost management services.

The Centre will create new skills and simulation facilities that can be used across health and social care disciplines. It will proactively address shortfalls in health professionals across the Marches area, with an emphasis on local people and students who will become key workers within the area. 

The new facilities will include a room for paramedic science and other disciplines, a mock house, various teaching spaces and new student social spaces. Tim Steele, Pro Vice-Chancellor, said:

“This is an exciting step forward for the new Marches Centre for Excellence in Health, Allied Health and Social Care at the Telford Campus. The importance of key workers in the health and social care sectors has never been more apparent than during the Covid-19 pandemic, and this Centre will provide state-of-the-art training facilities for the next generation of key workers.

“We’re delighted to be working with Overbury on this project, which will create an innovative and technologically advanced learning environment. It will transform the training of professionals for the Marches area and enable us to meet local demand within the health and social care workforce.”

The Centre will also include an immersive reality suite for emergency planning and simulations of a variety of clinical and non-clinical settings, interview and mock office environments for social work training and student collaboration spaces.

A new Anamotage Room will be created, following on from the success of similar innovations at the University’s Wolverhampton and Walsall Campus. This will feature a state-of-the-art Anamotage table which allows students to ‘see’ inside the human body.

The first phase of the project will see the development of new academic courses, apprenticeships and Continuous Professional Development (CPD) courses at the Telford Campus from March 2021.