The £107m NHS centre took its first patients on 2 September at Stanford on Soar, ten months late. 70 beds, free parking, an hourly bus from Nottingham.

England’s first NHS National Rehabilitation Centre took its first patients on Wednesday 2 September. It is in Rushcliffe, at Stanford on Soar, about ten miles south of West Bridgford.

The centre has 70 beds and cost £107 million. It is run and staffed by Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, which announced the opening on the day. It was due to open in November 2025.

It treats people who have had a life-changing illness or injury. Most patients will come from across the East Midlands, and the trust expects many of them to arrive from the East Midlands Major Trauma Centre at the Queen’s Medical Centre.

Where it is

The address is Stanford Hall Estate, Melton Road, Stanford on Soar, Loughborough LE12 5GF. The village is in Rushcliffe borough, but its post town is Loughborough, which is why the centre is often described as being in Leicestershire.

It sits on the 365-acre Stanford Hall Rehabilitation Estate, sharing the site with the Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre, the military facility that opened in 2018. The two buildings are about 400 metres apart.

What is inside

The trust lists the following in its announcement:

  • the most comprehensive robotics suite in the NHS, including devices used to help people walk again and relearn how to use their hands
  • the first 360-degree partial body weight support system, a Zero G hoist, in the UK, in the main gym
  • real-time location technology, a silent nurse call system and intelligent bedside screens
  • shared use of the defence centre’s hydrotherapy suite, gait lab, X-ray and MRI, and its CAREN immersive virtual reality room
  • solar panels and four air source heat pumps, making it the NHS’s first single-site operationally carbon neutral building

Patients also get the run of the estate, which has a 5km trim trail, a hand-cycle track, a fishing lake and a pitch and putt course. Every bedroom looks out over it.

Why it is ten months late

The opening was pushed back from last November after a failed water quality check. The trust says the problem has been “fully resolved” by the contractor, Integrated Health Projects, a joint venture between VINCI Building and Sir Robert McAlpine, and that it accepted the keys to the building on 24 July. Staff then went through refresher training before patients arrived.

What it means for you

You cannot refer yourself. Every admission goes through the clinical referral process, so the route in is your consultant or GP, not the centre. The NRC says so on its own site and asks people not to email requests.

If you are visiting someone, the trust’s travel page gives the practical detail:

  • parking is free, with blue badge spaces
  • put “National Rehabilitation Centre” into your satnav, or the postcode LE12 5QD, and follow signs to the NRC entrance on the A6006 Melton Road
  • do not try to enter the DMRC military site
  • the trust says the centre is on the hourly number 1 bus route from Nottingham and Loughborough, and points to nctx.co.uk for times
  • the what3words locator is ///gilding.stylist.subway

Driving from West Bridgford, the usual route is the A60 or A6006 towards Loughborough; the estate entrance is signed off the A6006.

The fifteen-year backstory

The idea came from the 6th Duke of Westminster in 2009, who bought the Stanford Hall estate so that a defence rehabilitation centre and a national one could sit side by side. The Black Stork Charity was set up to raise the £300 million that built the military centre and made the NHS one possible.

Timeline of the National Rehabilitation Centre from 2009 to September 2026
Chart by West Bridgford Live

Anthony May, chief executive of Nottingham University Hospitals, said the centre “has been 15 years in the making” and thanked the Black Stork Charity and the late and present Dukes of Westminster.

Miriam Duffy, the NRC’s director and a physiotherapist, said the centre is “much more than just a building” and that the aim is “to revolutionise rehabilitation across the country”.

Mark Preston, chairman of the Black Stork Charity, was more cautious about what happens next. He said the approach “is novel and will need proving in the next couple of years and, if proven, Government should look to such provision across the country”.

That is the long-term plan: the trust wants the Stanford on Soar site to become the national hub, with regional rehabilitation units as spokes. Research and training will run through an NRC Academy working with 26 universities.

Sources

Distance from West Bridgford is a straight-line measurement between village centres.