Ending long-distance placements across the South West
Willmott Dixon has completed The Kingfisher, a £20 million, 10-bed specialist inpatient facility on the Blackberry Hill site in Bristol for Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust (AWP). Handed over in August 2026, the building was purpose-designed for people with a learning disability and autistic people who need specialist mental health care that cannot be provided in a mainstream hospital or at home.
Patients in this group have historically travelled long distances for that care. The Kingfisher was built to bring those placements to an end across the northern half of the South West, keeping people closer to their families, friends and carers. Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire Integrated Care Board led the commissioning on behalf of neighbouring ICBs, and the facility forms one half of a coordinated regional offer alongside a companion unit in Devon, the first time systems across the South West have worked together to deliver these services.
Designed with lived experience at its heart
Over an 18-month period, groups representing people with a learning disability and autistic people met the design team to shape the building from the inside out: ward layout, furniture design, garden landscaping and sensory considerations such as acoustics and lighting. That contribution is visible throughout the completed facility, and it set the standard for how the project team worked with the Trust from preconstruction through to handover.
What we delivered
The scheme involved demolishing the existing building and constructing a purpose-built specialist unit in its place:
- A 1,482m² two-storey inpatient unit providing 10 specialist bedrooms, fully integrated into the wider Blackberry Hill site.
- Therapeutic internal environments shaped by people with lived experience, acoustics, lighting, furniture and sensory design.
- Landscaped external and garden space designed with service users, families and carers.
- A fully electric, gas-free building served by air source heat pumps, with no reliance on fossil fuels for heating or hot water.
- 84 roof-mounted solar panels totalling 37.38 kWp, generating an estimated 33,390 kWh of renewable electricity a year.
- A sustainable drainage solution using an ACO Roofbloxx attenuation crate system, engineered for a tightly constrained urban site.