Planning Approved at Chryston Community Hub

The project offers the children and residents of Chryston a tremendous opportunity to experience a modern Community Hub, with a learning environment at its core, coupled with state of the art health and wellbeing facilities.  The new primary school will accommodate up to 509 pupils, whilst the new community health clinic will provide treatment / clinical rooms and a group room to support the provision of local health services.

Design proposals have been developed through an extensive intelligent briefing process.  This process determined the aspirations of these stakeholders, which include learners, staff, residents and parents, as well as identified shared strategic objectives and clear measures of success to inform the spatial requirements of the project.

These include:

•  A people centred, welcoming project
•  Improving health and wellbeing of the community
•  Highly adaptable and responsive to changing needs

This continuous engagement with the local community ensures that the end users are always at the heart of the design.

The education facilities will provide naturally lit flexible spaces fit for twenty first century learning and will be agile enough to accommodate a wide range of learning requirements, whilst the clinic will provide naturally lit, accessible community health spaces. The designs will embody a high degree of adaptability to enable them to respond to the changing requirements of the local community over the life of the project.

Ryder has developed the landscape design as an integral part of the development to create seamless transitions between the internal and external environments.  The treatment and consultation rooms all benefit from a visual connection into a private health garden and all class bases benefit from direct access to the playground.  The daily mile walking route encircles the development, indicated with footprints around the site.  Within the playground a forest school learning zone sits to the north west of the building alongside the external dining zone.  Play equipment, bug hotels, allotment beds, and a fire pit surrounded by log seating all provide different teaching and learning opportunities for the school.

A multi use games area provides space for organised and informal sports activities.  Facilities such as a Bikeabillity track, climbing frames, slides and mountaineering ramps sit within the undulations of the landscape for an exciting play experience.

Chris Malcolm, partner at Ryder and the project director, said, “This is a really important milestone in delivering this fantastic project – it is a great example of how a collaborative approach can deliver better services for our places and communities through intelligent briefing.”

Lynne Wilson and Yvonne Allan, of North Lanarkshire Council and NHS Lanarkshire respectively, said, “The plans for this exciting community hub in Chryston will offer education and health provision in the very heart of the community.

“Fundamentally we are creating multi purpose, flexible spaces based on community needs and we look forward to watching the next stage of the process progress.

“The modern, multimillion pound facility will play an important role in further continuing the move to providing more integrated community based health and care services, improve accessibility, and enable better joined up working between staff.”

Construction work is expected to begin later this year, with estimated completion in early 2023.