Royal Sussex County Hospital gets Approval

Brighton and Hove City Council has announced that it is minded to grant planning permission for the redevelopment of the Royal Sussex County Hospital site. This has been the largest and most complex application that BDP’s planning team, headed by Tessa O’Neill, has undertaken.  The new Regional Centre for Teaching, Trauma and Tertiary Care (3Ts) has been developed through a P21 Framework partnership between the Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust, and Laing O’Rourke, with a team of designers from BDP, WSP and the Sweett Group.

The existing buildings, some over 200 years old, are amongst the oldest in the NHS, with cramped wards, inadequate clinical areas and limited public spaces. There is an overwhelming need to replace them with modern facilities which are welcoming, accessible and purpose-built for the provision of 21st century healthcare. The new buildings will include 361 beds with an average of 75% in single en-suite bedrooms, a helipad for the fast admittance of major trauma patients, and additional car parking spaces underground. The centre will provide trauma care services for the population of the south east, along with an increase in cancer centre facilities and a regional centre for brain injury patients.
 
BDP was appointed as lead designer, building on the success of the Royal Alex Children’s Hospital, which the Trust set as the design quality benchmark for the scheme. As with the Alex, the Trust’s primary aim was to put people at the heart of the team’s thinking. Lead design director, Benedict Zucchi said “It has been wonderful to be able to continue BDP’s collaboration with the Trust in ensuring that the feel, scale and sequence of spaces creates an reinvigorating sense of place and environment that is as reassuring and welcoming as possible.”

BDP project director, Neil Cadenhead, said “This is excellent news! BDP has worked in close partnership with the Trust and the whole design team to provide a solution which fits a large scale hospital sensitively into its historic context. The topography of the site is fully exploited with the necessary mass of the building broken down into fingers. The bulk of the ward accommodation faces south to make best use of the views over the English Channel for the patients.”