New facility for Trauma, Teaching and Tertiary Care to welcome first inpatients

New pictures of the fully completed £500m facility at the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton have been released as the building taking its first inpatients next week.

The ‘3Ts’ development is transforming the Royal Sussex County Hospital, one of the oldest in the country, with a three-phase plan to improve services and provide a new regional centre for Trauma, Teaching, and Tertiary Care.

The new images were released by McBains, the construction consultancy providing construction supervision, cost management and project management services for the delivery of the facility.

The newly completed Stage 1 – the first and largest of the three-stage programme – will see the opening of 62,000 sq m of clinical and support accommodation in the new Louisa Martindale Building, named after the first female GP in Brighton who became one of the world’s leading gynaecologists.

The redevelopment will take the front half of the hospital from the 19th to 21st century – by facilitating the decanting of services from the oldest acute ward building in the NHS (the Barry Building, which opened in 1828) to the newest clinical building in NHS England.

The building will have major new facilities for more than 30 wards and departments, new diagnostic and theatre capacity, as well as increased capacity for the departments with high demand, including neurosciences, stroke services and intensive care.

The re-development includes:

• Approximately 200 single-bed rooms throughout the upper floors, as well as 4-bed bays, and specialist rooms such as radiopharmacy and major medical equipment, including MRIs.
• The work will increase most wards by five times as much space per bed as is currently available, significantly improving patient experience and the space for doctors, nurses, and support staff.
• Currently, all neuroscience services offered are spread over multiple sites but the new development will unify all services under one roof in the new Louisa Martindale Building. This will also house the Intensive Care and High Dependency Units on the same floor to ensure life-saving care can be administered as efficiently as possible.
• Relocation of the 165-year-old, Grade 2 listed Chapel interior – the oldest operating chapel in a healthcare facility in the UK – from the Barry Building into the new building.

Steve Brooker, Project Director at McBains, said: “We are delighted to be able to unveil the first new pictures of the fully completed Louisa Martindale Building, which will significantly enhance patient care for the region.

"An incredible amount of hard work has gone into ensuring the successful completion of the building and is a true testament of the power of collaboration and teamwork that we've managed to achieve this incredible milestone. We now look ahead to its transformation into a working hospital and its vital role in transforming the lives of patients, staff and visitors."

Stage 2 of the re-development is currently in the pre-building (pre-construction services agreement) stage, with McBains leading the consultancy of the planning stages. Stage 2 will remove the existing vacant buildings and construct a new Sussex Cancer Centre, providing 29,000 sq m of clinical and support accommodation, providing far more availability for current and future patients, increasing the number of chemotherapy beds and radiotherapy machines.