As entries are now being sought for this year’s Durham Environment Awards, Chris Lloyd talks to the supervet behind the building that was last year hailed as outstanding

IN his loose fitting, purple-blue surgery rompersuit, with washable plastic crocs on his feet, Dr Gerard te Lintelo looks exactly like an eminent medical consultant just out of the theatre.

And his practice, in an elegant new-build with wide views over the Durham countryside, feels like a plush private hospital.

Dr te Lintelo is fresh out of surgery – he has just repaired a slipped disc in a dog’s spine – and this is an animal hospital. It is in is one of the most environmentally-friendly buildings in the North-East which at last year’s Durham Environment Awards was declared overall outstanding.

You can see the building’s eco-credentials as you pull off the A689 at the Bradbury interchange with the A1(M) – there’s a meadowy mat of sedum growing on the gently arching roof.

“It is on the north side because if it’s in bright sun it’ll dry out and need watering, although sedum is very hardy against drought,” he explains. “It slows down water egress from the roof and in summer its layer of soil helps keep the building cool.”

He pauses. Good environmental practices are about more than just saving water, energy and money. He continues: “And from a human point of view, it looks good. Last summer it was heaving with bees, butterflies and flowers, and I like that.”

Dr te Lintelo grew up on his parents’ pig and dairy farm in the Netherlands. He loved the vets’ visits, and he was captivated by James Herriot’s stories.

“I thought the books were better than the TV series but if he couldn’t fix an animal, he would take it to a specialist who had a beautiful wife and James always got completely embarrassed in front of the wife,” he says. “I never wanted to be James Herriot – I wanted to be the specialist.”

After university in Utrecht, he moved to Oxfordshire and then, in 2005, he alighted upon Bishop Auckland, choosing it partly because he liked the look of Weardale in the rain, and partly because there wasn’t a “supervet” practice in the district.

His business, Wear Referrals, takes on the tricky cases referred up by other vets.

“We’ve got neurology, cardiology, orthopaedics, soft tissue,” he says. “Our departments are not as specialised as human treatments, but we are following the same path. Our MRI scanner is the same as at James Cook and nurses think it is normal that a dog has the same healthcare as they have.”

Having out-grown his premises in Bishop, he began casting around for a location to build a multi-disciplinary hospital on environmental lines. Sixty potential sites were whittled down to the one at the motorway junction – only to find that the grassland on the edge of the Bradbury Carrs was owned by a petrol station company based in Kenya.

“The brief for the architect was because it is in such a visual location, it had to be eye catching and pleasing, to sit within its rural landscape,” he says. “I wanted it to be very energy friendly, and I didn’t want it to look like a hospital.”

This grand design is a triumph. With its graceful curves and sedum roof, it looks so unlike a hospital that a couple once came into reception asking for a room for the night.

About 80 people work there treating 3,000 new patients a year – ten per cent cats and the rest largely dogs – which comes from as far afield as Scotland and Leeds and York.

The hospital is heated by sustainable woodchip from Hexham, with heat exchangers warming the fresh air coming in with the heat in the stale air going out. Solar panels provide 20 per cent of its electricity; sensors turn off taps and lights when not in use; a filtration system recycles as much water as possible and, probably most importantly, the whole building is wrapped in a thermal envelope to keep the heat where it is wanted – in or out, depending on the season.

“We are almost carbon negative, so effectively we can heat the building for free for 20 years,” he says. “People always think eco-friendliness costs more, but it doesn’t have to be more expensive. Being green and economic goes hand in hand. This is £20,000-a-year cheaper to run than a conventional building, so our initial investment will be returned within five years.”

But good environmental practices are about more than just saving litres, kilowatts and pounds. There are human benefits, too.

“Having a nicely designed building is very useful for attracting staff – top surgeons from down south were flabbergasted by how it looked,” says Dr te Lintelo, who was so captivated by the Herriot stories that he named his eldest son Tristram. “Every room upstairs has a view over the countryside which gives you a great feeling of space.

“The building gives me great PR because people talk about it and every visitor mentions the sedum – they say we are ‘the beautiful building with the green roof’.”

Even Tricki-Woo would be impressed.

Closing date for the Durham Environment Awards is July 15. Further details at countydurhampartnership.co.uk/envawards or on 03000 265 545.