THE NHS has been using, what it described as, “people power” to help design the services and facilities for the planned new health campus in Whitehill and Bordon.

Health bosses hosted two “design workshops” last month, at which they discussed the proposed health campus with residents and other interested stakeholders.

More than 20 people, including patients and community representatives, attended each workshop.

Three issues were discussed: proposed health outcomes for local people; the services needed to deliver these outcomes locally, and the ethos and design principles that should be taken into account for the health campus.

This week the NHS highlighted the key themes which arose during its public-engagement events:

* Transport, and people’s abilities to travel to health services, need to be considered.

* Health, social care, leisure and voluntary-sector services need to work together.

* The population figures used to plan the health campus need to include the surrounding villages and expected growth.

* The health campus design should be friendly and welcoming.

* The building should promote a general feeling of safety, security, calm, independence and a caring and re-assuring atmosphere.

* Useful private sector services should be integrated within the campus, such as food-and-drink outlets, a pharmacy, an optician and dental services.

Elizabeth Kerwood, head of communications and engagement for the South Eastern Hampshire Clinical Commissioning Group, said that community engagement was a helpful part of the project.

“The feedback from the sessions has been collated and will be used by the project team to help shape plans for the health campus,” she said. “We will also be planning how we continue to seek the views of local people on the plans as they are developed.”

Lisa Medway, project manager for the NHS South Eastern Hampshire Clinical Commissioning Group, which plans and buys most local health services for the area, has said the new campus will be a place where health and care services come together “in a central location in the new town”.

She said it “represents a very exciting opportunity for the community and for us as a health service to provide quality services that are needed and wanted in a dynamic purpose-built facility”.

Last year Whitehill and Bordon was awarded Healthy New Town status.

The town was one of 114 competing for the flagship health status - an NHS England programme, supported by Public Health England - which aims to design towns with health and wellbeing at their heart.

By designing towns in this way it is hoped they will help prevent illness, encourage healthy lifestyle choices and enable people to remain independent to a much later age than at present.

The NHS hopes that the Healthy New Towns will be nationally significant and will become the blueprint for how other areas across the country can focus more intensely on health – and by doing this help create healthier vibrant communities elsewhere.

A partnership - consisting of local NHS organisations, public-health organisations, local government, voluntary-sector partners and developers - put forward the successful proposal for Whitehill and Bordon to be designated as a Healthy New Town.

With the status locked in, the NHS has said it is “committed to providing the best possible range of healthcare services that we can to the people Whitehill and Bordon and we very much welcome the council’s work in bringing all the various partners together”.

The 10 Healthy New Towns, including Whitehill and Bordon, demonstrator sites are:

* Cranbrook, Devon: 8,000 new homes.

* Darlington, County Durham: 2,500 new homes across three linked sites in the Eastern Growth Zone.

* Barking Riverside, east London: 10,800 homes on London’s largest brownfield site.

* Whyndyke Farm in Fylde, Lancashire: 1,400 homes.

* Halton Lea, Runcorn, Cheshire: 800 residential units.

* Bicester, Oxfordshire: 393 houses in the Elmsbrook project, part of 13,000 new homes planned.

* Northstowe, Cambridgeshire: 10,000 homes on former military land.

* Ebbsfleet Garden City, Kent: up to 15,000 new homes in the first garden city for 100 years

* Barton Park, Oxford: 885 homes.