Welcome to the consultation hub for our plans for a new development in Chelsea
Leading cancer research and treatment since 1851
At The Royal Marsden, we deal with cancer every day, so we understand how valuable life is. And when people entrust their lives to us, they have the right to demand the very best.
That’s why the pursuit of excellence lies at the heart of everything we do. No matter what we achieve, we’re always striving to do more. No matter how much we exceed expectations, we believe we can exceed them still further. We will never stop looking for ways to improve the lives of people affected by cancer. This attitude defines us all and is an inseparable part of the way we work. It’s The Royal Marsden way.
Our home in central London is an iconic building situated right in the heart of Chelsea. We are proud to be a part of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea – as a world leader in cancer care, as an employer and as a neighbour. That’s why we are currently exploring proposals to sensitively add to the Chelsea site, respecting the rich heritage and history of our buildings, so that we can secure the hospital’s future in the borough for the long-term.
This webpage is where you can learn more about our early proposals to develop our Chelsea site and keep up to date as the plans progress. It will also be where information about public consultation events is hosted in the future.
Our vision is to expand surgical capacity and help more patients access our world-leading care
To do this we are proposing to improve and extend the Chelsea site to ensure that The Royal Marsden is well-equipped to continue its life-saving treatment, diagnostics, and research.
We want to expand our capacity, modernise our facilities, and provide state-of-the-art technologies within a building which works better for both patients and staff. These innovations won’t just help our patients in Chelsea but will be spread around the world to transform patients’ experience everywhere.
We are proposing to create a new development that will improve every part of a patient’s cancer journey – from diagnosis, through treatment, to living with and beyond cancer.
We also need to grow to meet the increasing demand for our services and still have the space to conduct our practice-changing research. The disease claims around 165,000 lives every year in the UK. We already see around 60,000 patients every year, and conservative estimates show a 2 per cent growth in cancer cases per year nationally.
We cannot afford to slow our pace and have no intention of curbing our ambition. Our research is opening new possibilities in cancer treatment that were unimaginable even a decade ago. We need to expand and modernise so that we can realise these opportunities and improve every part of the cancer experience for patients across the UK and around the world.
Our Ambitions
Our ambition is for this development in Chelsea to be a largely donor-funded project, made possible by the generosity of supporters of The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity.
We have four key ambitions for this project:
Help more people to survive cancer, locally and globally, through essential treatment and research.
Be there for more people who need us by increasing our clinical capacity.
Improve every part of a patient’s cancer journey – from diagnosis, through to precision treatment and care, to living with, and beyond, cancer.
Chelsea is our home in central London, and we want to secure our future in the borough for the long-term.
Where we are now and what’s coming soon
In June we launched a competitive procurement process to bring on board an architect. Following the completion of this process in November, we have now appointed an architectural team for this scheme. As lead architect, Stanton Williams brings extensive experience of designing complex buildings in sensitive urban locations and a track record of delivering highly successful and award-winning research and healthcare buildings with challenging briefs. They will work closely with John Cooper Architecture and MJ Medical on the healthcare aspects of the scheme.
Stanton Williams’ approach to all projects is collaborative and people-centred, focussing on the human experience of the places they design. This is especially relevant for complex healthcare buildings, where clinical and technical requirements dominate the character of the environment, often increasing anxiety around patients’ treatment and care. By contrast, Stanton Williams strives to create places which are welcoming, genuinely inclusive and that promote wellbeing. By listening and developing a thorough understanding of the needs and aspirations of the end users, they design places where the quality of the environment helps achieve better clinical outcomes, while reducing stress for patients and their families. These values perfectly align with The Royal Marsden values of delivering the very best treatment and care for our patients.
We are currently working closely with Stanton Williams to create an initial design for the development in Chelsea. We will consult with the local community, patients, and our staff to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to provide their feedback on the proposals. This will ensure that the public have a say in what the new development will look like like and help us to ensure we remain a good neighbour to the local community.
Contact us
If you would like to contact our consultation team at this stage, please fill out the enquiry form below or use the Freephone line or email address and a member of the team will respond to you.
Phone Number
0800 092 1866
RMconsultation@londoncommunications.co.uk