Construction has begun on a new Community Diagnostic Centre (CDC) in Luton, following a groundbreaking ceremony attended by NHS officials, university representatives and the appointed contractor. The £25 million facility will serve patients across Luton and South Bedfordshire, offering diagnostic services that currently require a visit to an acute hospital site.
The centre will be built on the University of Bedfordshire's Luton campus and will provide endoscopy, CT scanning and bone density scanning, known as DEXA, for adult patients. It is scheduled to open in spring 2027.Set to open in spring 2027, a new centre on the University of Bedfordshire's Luton campus will offer adult patients a range of services. These services will include endoscopy, CT scanning, and DEXA (bone density scanning).
The project is a joint undertaking between Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, the Central East Integrated Care Board and the University of Bedfordshire. Construction firm Ashe Group has been appointed to carry out the build. The ceremony marking the start of construction was attended by colleagues from across all partner organisations, signalling a formal commitment to the project after what will have been a considerable period of planning and approvals.
David Carter, Chief Executive of Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said the development would ease pressure on the trust's main hospital site while bringing care closer to patients. Dr Jacquelyn Harvey, Clinical Director for Gastroenterology and Endoscopy at the trust, said earlier access to imaging and endoscopy would mean faster answers and quicker treatment for patients where necessary.
The decision to site the centre on a university campus carries a secondary benefit. Professor Andrew Church, Interim Vice Chancellor of the University of Bedfordshire, said the facility would create learning opportunities for healthcare students on campus. The arrangement gives students direct exposure to a live clinical environment without leaving their place of study, which may prove particularly useful for those training in radiography, nursing and allied health disciplines.
Community Diagnostic Centres are part of a wider NHS programme to shift certain services away from large hospital sites. The aim is to reduce waiting times for routine diagnostics by creating dedicated facilities with capacity that is not competing with emergency and inpatient demands. Endoscopy and imaging services, in particular, have faced sustained pressure in recent years, with long waits for procedures such as colonoscopies contributing to delays in cancer diagnosis.
Ian Robbins, Managing Director at Ashe Group, said the facility had been designed to meet current needs while remaining adaptable for future requirements. The construction firm has previously delivered other healthcare environments across the country.
The Luton CDC is one of several such facilities either open or in development across England. NHS England has invested in expanding the CDC network since 2020, when the programme was announced as part of efforts to address a growing backlog in diagnostic testing that predated, and was then worsened by, the Covid-19 pandemic. Waiting lists for diagnostic procedures have remained elevated since, and community facilities have been positioned as a practical route to increasing throughput without expanding acute hospital capacity.
For Luton specifically, the location on the University of Bedfordshire campus places the facility within a densely populated urban area with relatively high levels of health need. South Bedfordshire, which the centre will also serve, includes areas where access to healthcare infrastructure has historically been more limited than in larger urban centres.
With construction now under way, the trust expects the facility to be operational and seeing patients within roughly a year. Whether it meets that timeline will depend in part on the build progressing without significant delays, though no complications have been reported at this stage.
