A cancer charity’s scheme to build a cancer treatment support centre on stilts at Oxford’s Churchill Hospital is set to be given the go-ahead by councillors next week.
A campaign to raise £3m to build a new drop-in centre for cancer patients and their families near the newly-opened cancer hospital was launched in March.
Maggie’s Oxford, which operates from a temporary building at the Churchill, wants to build a single-storey timber tree-house raised on stilts and nestled among trees.
A planning officers’ report to the city council’s north east area committee will recommend this coming Tuesday that councillors approve the centre, which will cost £2m to build.
A further £1m is needed to run the facility for two years. More than £630,000 has already been raised.
The centre would be built on a land to the south of the Julia Durbin Day Nursery on the Churchill site.
The building would provide an entrance area, library, dining and sitting room areas, offices and three consultation rooms.
It is expected that the centre would be visited by between ten and 40 people a day.
The report says: “It is considered that the scheme proposes an exciting and sympathetic modern building, whose innovative design has been strongly influenced by the surrounding natural environment.”
Maggie’s Centres are well known for their innovative designs. Other centres are located in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Inverness, Dundee, Fife and London.
The centres are the brainchild of Maggie Keswick Jencks, who died of breast cancer in 1995. Like her husband, the architectural writer and critic Charles Jencks, she believed in the ability of buildings to uplift people.
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