Test flights will finally start on the Royal Sussex’s new helipad, eight years after it was due to become operational.
The helicopter landing area has cost £16 million to build – a large chunk of which has been spent on fixing issues which have stopped it being used.
These include replacing cladding on the Thomas Kemp tower, on which it sits, after surveys found the backdraft from choppers could blow it off in 2023.
Then in 2024, further surveys found the windows of the Trevor Mann baby unit on the tower’s top floor could also be damaged, and so they needed to be reinforced.
When it finally opens, it will only be used from 7am to 7pm.
A spokeswoman for University Hospitals Sussex NHS Trust, which runs the hospital, said: “This has been a long‑running and highly complex project, involving the installation of major new infrastructure on an older building within a busy and constrained hospital site — all further complicated by the global pandemic.
“The project was agreed many years ago by a previous leadership team. Since then, subsequent trust leaders have worked hard to overcome the significant challenges associated with making the helipad safe and effective.
“We are now pleased to be approaching the point where patients will begin to benefit from the new helipad. Once operational, it will dramatically reduce transfer times for the most seriously ill and injured patients across Sussex, allowing them to be brought directly to the hospital for trauma care.”
This has been a shambles from start to finish. £16m and 8yrs to provide a helipad that can only be used for 12hrs a day. I do hope there will be an inquiry…….
On the plus side, it will provide better outcomes for those emergency cases arriving at and leaving from the hospital. It will save the precious minutes lost ferrying patients from helicopter to ambulance in East Brighton Park and from ambulance to hospital. I hope it’s a success.
I’m glad to finally see this project progressing. And in addition to Justin, reducing the number of times a patient has to be moved by travelling directly and avoiding the need for transfers will be very important. Very few major trauma centres, in the single digits, in the whole of the UK, Royal Sussex is one of them!
No amount of money is going to fix those dangerous coastal head winds. The helipad should never had been built there and any further efforts to make it functional are throwing good money after bad.
It looks a bit like the whole helipad structure was an afterthought, thrown together with scaffolding, instead of being incorporated in the new building’s design. Is this partly why it’s needed so much remedial work? I hope sufficient use and value comes from it and that it doesn’t prove to be a money pit with constant repairs needed..
It kinda was an afterthought, to be fair. It was underway before the updated design! Just taken a long time to finish. About seven years?
The whole hospital looks like an afterthought! Not great for a £760 million project.
What a waste of NHS resources. They should have focussed on a larger A&E department.
They’re going to do that too: https://www.brightonandhovenews.org/2023/03/17/brighton-ae-to-be-given-48m-revamp/
Neither 7 years late or 8 years late, the helideck is 22 years late, having been agreed when the £Ts scheme was approved by all parts f the NHS in 2004. And 14 years after the hospital was designated as a Major Trauma Centre in 2012. Every other major Trauma Centre in England had a helipad long ago, but the NHS here deemed Brighton didn’t need one to be MTC, which always seemed a bit strange to me. Night flights were approved a few years ago, so maybe that licence has been revoked as there was little progress. All in all the rem SNAFU applies.