High point reached on the construction of The Christie at Macclesfield

A major milestone has been reached in the construction of The Christie at Macclesfield cancer centre.

The structural frame for the new £26m cancer centre has been completed and the project has reached its highest point in the construction process.

Lorraine Johnson, a Christie patient and fundraiser from Macclesfield, was invited to view the progress being made on the cancer centre, which will open to patients in December 2021.

She was joined by Darren Bugg, head of capital at The Christie who is overseeing the construction project and by Louise Dawson from The Christie charity, which needs to raise £23m towards the £26m project.

Lorraine was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2008 and had treatment. Sadly, during a routine scan in 2018, she found that she had secondary breast cancer in the bones of her spine. This has also recently spread to her lungs.

She had worked at the Broken Cross Club in Macclesfield but retired last year. The club has already raised more than £2,000 towards the new cancer centre.

Along with her friends and former colleagues at the Broken Cross Club in Macclesfield, Lorraine is hoping to be able to do more fundraising for the new centre once the COVID-19 lockdown restrictions are lifted. She said: “I am thrilled to be invited to mark this important point in the building of the new cancer centre. A lot of work has been done since last summer when the site was flat. Having looked at what The Christie is planning to do here, the new facilities look superb.

“The Christie at Macclesfield will make a huge difference to patients like me and others who follow. Being treated in Macclesfield, rather than having to travel to The Christie in Withington, will be less stressful and time consuming for patients. It’s a fantastic project and I hope that more people will help with the fundraising this year.”

The Christie at Macclesfield will transform cancer care in Cheshire, the High Peak area of Derbyshire and parts of North Staffordshire, providing care closer to home for more than 1,500 existing Christie patients a year.

It will bring together essential cancer services into one purpose-built centre delivering local specialist access to radiotherapy, chemotherapy, holistic support and information services, outpatient care, palliative care and a wider range of clinical trials. Around 40,000 appointments per year will take place at the new centre.

Louise Stimson from The Christie charity said: “We are delighted with the progress that is being made building The Christie at Macclesfield. The new centre will deliver cancer care to the highest Christie standards, but closer to where patients live. Many patients currently travel to The Christie in South Manchester, putting tremendous pressure on them and their families at an already stressful time. The Christie charity is raising £23m for this vital project.

“As a charity, we have been hit hard by COVID-19. The loss of income directly impacts the support we can offer the hospital. We have never needed our supporters more - each and every penny raised makes a difference to patients like Lorraine and thousands of others. Cancer doesn’t stop for a pandemic.”        

The construction of the new cancer centre is being carried out by VINCI Construction UK. The plans for the new cancer centre were approved by East Cheshire Council in September 2019.

For details of how you can support The Christie at Macclesfield fundraising appeal, go to www.christies.org/macclesfield

The Christie charity supports the work of The Christie NHS Foundation Trust providing enhanced services over and above what the NHS funds. This includes money for care and treatment, research, education and extra patient services. Gifts from the public make a huge difference to the care and treatment that The Christie is able to provide to patients and their families.

The Christie NHS Foundation Trust was the first specialist trust to be rated as ‘Outstanding’ twice (in 2016 and 2018) by the health regulator the Care Quality Commission (CQC). It referred to The Christie as ‘a leader in cancer care’ and ‘a pioneer in developing innovative solutions to cancer care.’ The CQC praised the Trust’s staff which it said ‘go the extra mile to meet the needs of patients and their families’ and that they were ‘exceptionally kind and caring.’ In 2017, the CQC rated The Christie as the best specialist trust in the country, and one of the top three trusts overall in England.  

About The Christie

• The Christie opened in 1901 and is now one of Europe’s leading cancer centres and the largest single-site centre in Europe 
• We are the largest radiotherapy provider in the NHS. We are also the largest provider in Europe, with one in 20 radiotherapy treatments delivered at The Christie. We are one of only two cancer centres worldwide to offer both MR-linac and high energy proton beam therapy (the other is MD Anderson in Texas, US).
• The Christie delivers chemotherapy treatment through the largest chemotherapy unit in the UK, as well as via 12 other sites, a mobile chemotherapy unit and in patients’ homes.
• The Christie is a specialist tertiary surgical centre concentrating on rare cancers, specialist procedures and multidisciplinary cancer surgery. It is one of the largest HIPEC centres in western Europe and one of only two in the UK to provide this treatment for appendiceal and colorectal tumours. It also has one of the largest robotic centres in the UK and the largest complex pelvic cancer team in the UK.
• The Christie is one of Europe's experimental cancer medicine centres and an international leader in research and development with around 650 clinical studies ongoing at any one time. The NIHR Manchester Clinical Research Facility at The Christie provides a high quality, dedicated clinical research environment for our patients to participate in trials.

·        The Christie charity is currently fundraising for some vital new projects including a new cancer centre in Macclesfield providing care closer to home, refurbishment of our CT scanning department with an improved environment and the latest 4D CT technology, and with our partners at The University of Manchester and Cancer Research UK, plans to build a new world class transformational research facility to replace the Paterson building. Find out more at www.christies.org/the-christie-charity/why-we-need-your-help/what-we-are-fundraising-for

• The Christie has one of the largest hospital charities in the UK with 82p in every pound raised going directly to the patients. We work hard to make sure that the money donated to us is spent where the hospital needs it most and we produce a separate Impact Report which gives more detail about how the charitable income is spent and the difference it has made to our patients and their families.

·        We have achieved a phenomenal amount thanks to the backing of our donors. In the past five years, our charity has helped to fund a purpose built teenage and young adult unit integrated with a haematology and transplant inpatient ward, a new Integrated Procedures Unit, a proton beam therapy research room, a state of the art MR-linac machine, a new gamma camera and new outreach services. Read more at www.christies.org/the-christie-charity/why-we-need-your-help/how-youve-helped/

• In 2019/20, The Christie charity was supported by 6,777 taking part in sporting event participants. 184 people left us a gift in their will and we received 1.494 in memoriam donations. We had 16,849 donations from corporate organisations, 43 gifts from charitable trusts and foundations, and we received 138,000 individual donations.
• Supporters can find out how to donate and make a payment at  www.christies.org/the-christie-charity/donate/make-a-donation/

Pictured - Louise Dawson (The Christie charity), Lorraine Johnson (Christie patient and fundraiser) and Darren Bugg (head of capital at The Christie).