Biodiversity enhancements across hospital estates in Wales

Opportunity

Health Boards in Wales have a statutory duty to maintain and enhance biodiversity. To meet this duty, the Aneurin Bevan University Health Board and Powys Teaching Health Board instructed Mott MacDonald to assess the existing biodiversity value across 14 hospital sites and identify opportunities to enhance existing habitats — for example by changing estate management practices or by creating new habitat.

Given that hospitals must meet the needs of staff and visitors as well as patients, our specialists recognised an opportunity for a holistic approach and worked with both health boards to identify biodiversity recommendations that would enhance wellbeing and connectedness with nature (biophilic design) as well as deliver historic landscape, net-zero and climate resilience benefits.

Solution

The project aimed to support the boards to meet their biodiversity duty in ways that cultivated a deeper appreciation and understanding of nature. It was led by our ecologists with advice from our experts in biophilic design, landscape, heritage, climate resilience and carbon. They identified wider opportunities from biodiversity enhancements at each estate. Early knowledge-sharing and guidance from these experts focused site survey work and shaped the biodiversity enhancements so that these maximise holistic benefits. Examples include:

• Accessible paths throughout the estate at a mental health hospital to promote wellbeing, and which are designed to be in keeping with existing habitats.
• Brass rubbing trails and activity packs at a children’s hospital to educate and engage people in good ecological estate management.
• Restoration of historic orchard, parkland and ancient woodland habitats at a large estate to both safeguard heritage and improve biodiversity.
• Strategic hedgerow and landscape planting to screen views and strengthen ecological connectivity for wildlife, as well as increase biodiversity value.
• Miniature drain-fed rain gardens that reuse water at small urban estates.
• Community planting initiatives for biodiversity ‘gardens’ to encourage and support the local community to contribute towards the biodiversity enhancements.
• Long-term habitat management plans with climate resilience measures.

A key success of this project is the innovative biodiversity solutions we proposed to deliver enhancements on even the smallest urban estates. These include repurposing spoil heaps to integrate invertebrate niches and incorporating drain-fed miniature rain gardens to filter water naturally. The introduction of information boards, activity packs and community planting schemes will help to improve the connection between people and nature. We also suggested carefully installing remote cameras to broadcast footage of wildlife to nearby hospitals, providing an opportunity for patients, staff and visitors to connect with nature in a way that may otherwise be inaccessible.

Climate resilience underpins all our recommendations and many build on biodiversity and wellbeing initiatives already in place, such as the ‘pharmabees’ or wildflower planting schemes or the ‘minute mile’ wellbeing walks.

Our recommendations were presented to the clients as a holistic package and was supported by visually engaging, non-technical plans produced by our GIS team.

Outcome

Collaboration across Mott MacDonald helped to shift the clients’ focus from fulfilling their biodiversity duty in line with Welsh government policy, to recognising the value of biodiversity in achieving a wider range of societal benefits, notably wellbeing and health, alongside environmental ones.

The feedback received from both health boards was overwhelmingly positive, with the Powys estates asking us to produce design management sheets and an online GIS web platform to help implement the changes. Both boards were particularly excited about the possibilities of integrating wellbeing benefits with biodiversity improvement across the 14 estates, which we tailored for each one, with different recommendations for general hospitals, mental health facilities and the children’s hospital. These biodiversity and wellbeing improvements complement the therapies and patient recovery programmes in place.

The project was a pilot to demonstrate how measures to enhance biodiversity can be rolled out by health boards across Wales. Our recommendations showed the success of this project beyond the brief, which can be rolled out to any hospital estate and particularly shows that biodiversity and wellbeing benefits are achievable regardless of scale. By combining biodiversity with other disciplines these solutions evidence the value of the scheme for future grant funding.