The Harborne Hospital

Prime played a pivotal role as developer and investment manager of the new £100m independent hospital for HCA Healthcare UK, knitting together the skills and aspirations of all the teams involved.

University Hospitals Birmingham (UHB) undertook a competitive process to facilitate the development of the private patient centre on its site that creates additional NHS capacity. HCA Healthcare UK and University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust partnered with Prime to develop the hospital.

The 138-bed specialist hospital facility is built on the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham campus. The £100m hospital includes a radiotherapy unit and state-of-the-art operating theatres. It is equipped with the latest technology to provide some of the most complex surgical and medical procedures and treatments across cancer, cardiology, neurology, hepatobiliary, urology, orthopaedics and stem cell transplantation.

This will give patients access to a level of acute private healthcare not currently available to the 500,000 people in the region who have private health insurance or who want to self-pay for their care.

M&G Investments has acquired a long leasehold interest in the site and financed the construction of the hospital with HCA UK entering into a long-term underlease with M&G. The 14,728sqm facility was built by VINCI Construction UK.

Prime secured planning permission for the 8-storey building in April 2018 and financial close was achieved in February 2019, moving the project forward into the construction phase which completed in 2023. The capital is provided by the M&G Secured Lease Income Fund, which generates long-term, contractually inflation-linked cashflows by investing in ‘income strips’ – a real estate transaction whereby the property interest reverts to the counterparty for a nominal sum following a long lease term. The Fund has provided capital to universities, local authorities and the corporate sector and has a portfolio including committed developments of £732m. This is the Fund’s first transaction in the healthcare sector.