Livewell Case Study

Three years after developing and implementing Livewell Southwest’s estate strategy, progress hit a log jam. Business cases had been created for both a new Children, Young People and Family Hub, and a Mental Health and Wellbeing Hub — but financial pressures meant the plans were no longer affordable.

Faced with this challenge, Livewell, Baxendale, and Abintra came together to explore a different question: Could the space needs of these services be met within the existing estate — avoiding the need for expensive new premises altogether?

Assessing the current estate

The core aim of this project was to assess whether Livewell’s current estate could accommodate the service needs. The project focused on two key priorities:

Identifying a financially realistic solution for Children, Young People, and Family Services.
Exploring whether space for Mental Health clinics could be delivered using the existing estate, without expanding the property footprint.

Identifying opportunities

We selected four key sites across the estate — each offering a combination of opportunity and high-quality infrastructure. These building types were the Community Services and Office space, Corporate Space, Training Centre and Clinic Space.

Working with Abintra, we installed discreet, wireless sensors across each building. These sensors collected real-time occupancy data over a three-month period, feeding into an interactive dashboard. This gave the team a highly detailed view of how space was being used — by building, service, room type, and even by individual desk.

The data showed:

Consistently low usage across all rooms and workspaces, occupation levels were below targets.
Mismatch between bookings and reality: Many rooms marked as ‘in use’ in the booking system were actually sitting empty
Underutilisation by space type:
- Clinic rooms: Target occupancy was 70%, bookings suggested 61%, but actual use was only 50%.
- Meeting rooms: 68% booked, 60% target, but only 39% used.
- Workstations: Just 39% used against a 70% target.
Heatmaps and time-of-day analysis further revealed large areas of high-quality space were underused, Mondays and Fridays were especially quiet — with occupancy dipping to as low as 15–20%.

This real-world data gave clarity: significant space was available, even where it had appeared fully utilised.

What were the outcomes?

“Working with Baxendale and Abintra has been a game changer for us at Livewell. For the first time, we’ve had robust data to challenge myths and assumptions about how our estate is used. We’ve moved from anecdote to evidence — and that’s given us the confidence to make bold decisions. We’re not just talking about the problem anymore; we’re taking action. This has put us in a far stronger position to plan for the future, make best use of what we’ve got, and ultimately invest where it makes the biggest difference to our staff and patients.”

- Geoff Baines, Deputy Chief Executive, Livewell Southwest CIC