HARLOW Health Centres Trust secures new Care Home at Sydenham House, providing vital long-term care to the Harlow community.

Sydenham House (on Monkswick Road) has been vacant for several years. Harlow Health Centres Trust is now delighted to announce it has negotiated to secure a new Care Home at Sydenham House. The Care Home provider will be a tenant of Harlow Health Centres Trust.

Agreement has just been reached with Essex Care Group Limited to provide initially a specialised Stroke Recovery Unit on the ground floor of Sydenham House. This unit will provide focussed, high-quality rehabilitation services tailored to stroke recovery. This unit will open in June 2025.

Then over the next 18 months on the first and second floors of Sydenham House Essex Care Group Limited will develop dedicated Discharge-to-Assess services and residential care, with a target opening in 2026.

All this amounts to a quiet but important shift happening on Monkswick Road in Harlow. Essex Care Group will deliver a 56-bed care home in Harlow, with plans to transform it into a centre of excellence for stroke recovery, complex care, and neuro-rehabilitation.

This isn’t just a change of management – it’s a fresh start with real intention behind it. The team at Essex Care Group supported by Harlow Health Centres Trust is focused on making Sydenham House not only a place of care, but of meaningful recovery and community connection.

At the heart of the service are Jennifer Esmas and Robin Damhar, bringing experience and compassion to the care management team. They’re joined by Dr Rory Macrae, Clinical Director, whose expertise in neurological rehabilitation brings a vital clinical foundation to the home’s future.

“We’re proud to be stepping into the next chapter for Sydenham House,” said Jennifer Esmas. “Our focus is on building a service that not only delivers outstanding clinical care but also becomes a trusted part of the local community. Every person deserves the chance to recover with dignity and support – and that’s what we’re here to provide.”

The goal is simple but ambitious: to offer high-quality, person-centred care that supports people and their families through some of life’s most challenging moments.

Bill Rammell, Chair of Harlow Health Centres Trust, said, “The opening of this new Care Home at Sydenham House is great news for the Harlow Community. Long term residential care is one of the great social challenges of our age. This partnership between Harlow Health Centres Trust and Essex Care Home Limited will make a great contribution to meeting this challenge and serve Harlow residents very well. It has taken a great deal of effort and collaboration with NHS Partners, particularly NHS Property Services to get here, but we are delighted we now have lift off.”

Harlow Health Centres Trust is unique in being a local charity providing and renting space to deliver excellent primary health care centres for people in Harlow. Since 1994 the Trust has embarked on a programme of redeveloping its existing buildings providing new state of the art health facilities for Harlow.

Sydenham House also houses a children’s day nursery and a doctors surgery.

The Trust also reinvests £150,000 each year in community health and wellbeing projects locally.