Ground breaking ceremony at Make Ready Depot
Tuesday, 17 May, 2011
Left to right - Philip Durigan, Managing Director Kier Southern, Mayor of Ashford, Councillor Alan Wells and SECAmb Chief Executive Paul Sutton.
South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust (SECAmb) made history on Friday, 13 May, with the groundbreaking of its first purpose-built Make Ready depot in Ashford.
The Mayor of Ashford, Councillor Alan Wells, joined the Trust's chief executive, Paul Sutton, along with Philip Durigan, Managing Director of Kier Southern, for the ceremony held at the site off Orbital Way.
The new Make Ready Depot, which will also be home to the Trust's Hazardous Area Response Team, is set to open in late autumn and will see ambulances cleaned, restocked and maintained by specialist staff.
The task of restocking and cleaning ambulances has historically been left to ambulance staff at the beginning and end of every shift.
The introduction of the Trust's award winning initiative will mean that ambulance clinicians can spend more time treating patients on ambulances which will be cleaned and regularly swabbed for the presence of micro-organisms, including MRSA and CDiff.
Paul Sutton said: "This is a significant step forward in our plans to create the first purpose built Make Ready depot. This new system of preparing our vehicles will ensure that we provide the very best environment in which to treat and transport our patients."
The Make Ready depot, which will be supported by a network of ambulance community responses posts, located in line with patient demand across parts of South East Kent.
It will see staff, currently working in Ashford, Dover, Folkestone and Lydd, begin and end their shifts at the new depot. However, during their shifts staff will respond from the response posts, providing facilities for staff.
Work is well underway to have the new posts in place for when the new depot becomes operational - thus protecting and improving the delivery of services to local communities.
The site of the new Make Ready depot has unearthed some interesting history.
The land was designated a site of archaeological interest after a trial trenching in the 1990s. It found evidence of late Bronze Age and Iron Age occupation on the land.
As a result and in response to a planning condition issued by Ashford Borough Council a programme of archaeological investigation and excavation was undertaken last year.
The excavation revealed extensive archaeological remains. The earliest of these comprising of a scatter of worked flint dating back to the Neolithic period (4000 to 2200 BC). The excavation also identified widespread evidence of settlement during the middle to late Iron Age (400 BC to AD 43).
SECAmb plan to make reference to these historical findings in the new depot building when it is completed.
