Stepping Hill Hospital Catering Block, Stockport

The Stepping Hill catering block is a new build kitchen facility designed to produce up to a maximum of 4000 meals per day. The hot production area comprised of two large cooking ranges, each with individual ventilation canopies, separate areas provides specialist cold kitchen and diet bay facilities.

Ancillary areas include fruit and veg preparation, meat preparation, a bakery and cold rooms/dry stores. Food was assembled on plates in a tray makeup and plating area, ready for distribution throughout the Hospital via heated trolleys and return to a central conveyor style washing machine.

A first-floor area provides plant space, office and staff facilities. Each area incorporates independent ventilation systems with heat recovery.  A large proportion of a kitchen’s energy use is heating ventilation air supply.  To reduce this energy consumption heat recovery coils were installed in the warm kitchen canopy discharge ductwork, used to pre-heat the cold incoming air supply.

An ultraviolet filter in the extract ductwork helps keep ductwork and equipment grease-free and reduces cleaning requirements. The canopies were designed to allow sections to be shut off if no cooking was carried out below, allowing airflow to be reduced and further energy savings achieved.  Further energy efficiency measures included installing PV panels on the facility roof.