Test flights due to take off from hospital helipad

Test flights are due to take off from a hospital's long-awaited helipad - eight years after the project began.

The £15.5m platform at the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton was originally meant to open in June 2019 but has been repeatedly delayed following structural concerns and rising costs.

In January 2023 the BBC revealed landing helicopters had the potential to blow cladding off the walls of the hospital, forcing remedial work to make the site safe.

University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust said the project had been "long‑running and highly complex", involving the installation of "major new infrastructure on an older building within a busy and constrained hospital site".

A spokesperson for the trust said: "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."

The helipad is on top of a 15-storey tower directly above The Trevor Mann Baby Unit.

The trust says test flights are likely to start by early March, weather dependent, following the conclusion of remedial works to some of the windows of the Thomas Kemp Tower, which are scheduled to finish by the end of this month.

The helipad was given planning permission for up to 70 flights a year to the hospital's A&E department, except in the scenario of a major incident.

It will receive flights between 07:00 and 19:00, 365 days a year, again except in a major incident, when it can also receive flights outside these hours.

Airlifted patients currently land in nearby East Brighton Park, and travel to hospital by ambulance.

Previously the trust had said 125-145 patients a year might arrive via the new helipad, once it is operational.

In 2019, an appeal raised £1.65m to help build the helipad.

The landing pad is expected to cost the trust in excess of £452,000 a year to operate.

Alison Bennett, the Lib Dem MP for Mid Sussex, said investment at the hospital was "much needed and very welcome".

But, she added: "When funding is so tight, and there are so many other parts of the NHS in dire need of investment, it is essential that lessons are learnt from the incompetence and waste with the helipad project."

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