Europe’s largest private healthcare partnership, Circle, has selected Countryside Properties and Liberty Property Trust’s mixed-use Didsbury Point in south Manchester as the location for a £70m hospital.
The employee-owned partnership of clinicians has bought a 5.3-acre site to house the 167,000 sq ft Norman Foster-designed CircleManchester, which will accommodate 600 NHS and private patients. It has been granted outline planning consent and will open in 2013.
Circle aims to open 30 private hospitals across the UK. It opened its first in Bath last March and is building a hospital in Reading for completion in autumn 2012. The group is also preparing to launch a £200m-£300m real estate fund. Jones Lang LaSalle advises Circle; Knight Frank acted for Countryside.
daniel.cunningham@estatesgazette.com
