East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust Capital Works Programme Update
The Trust continues to deliver a comprehensive and wide-ranging capital works programme of the ESHT estate within the current fiscal year.
This includes a range of new clinical facilities such as the new Sussex Surgical Centre and Sussex Endoscopy Unit, together with ongoing progress on modernisation and adaptation/refurbishment of the current estate to improve and meet changing clinical requirements. This also includes major schemes such as the Cardiology Transformation programme and diagnostics facilities update viz-a-viz the CT scanner and Interventional Radiology replacements/upgrades at Conquest.
We also continue to replace ageing medical equipment at our hospitals. This is supplemented by often generous donations, from the various Friends charitable organisations at Eastbourne DGH, Conquest and Bexhill hospitals.
Furthermore, we continue to invest funding year on year in our estate to mitigate the effect of backlog maintenance/critical infrastructure risks at Eastbourne DGH, Conquest and Bexhill hospitals.
At the request of HOSC, we have provided an update on capital projects for FY25/26.
This report is solely concerned with capital works programme that involve construction works i.e. the physical works to the ESHT property portfolio works across the ESHT estates and exclude digital e.g. Electronic Patient Record etc., all of which form part of a wide ranging and comprehensive ESHT capital program.
The Sussex Surgical Centre (SSC), our new £40 million purpose-built unit, elective surgery hub, opened its doors in September 2025 to its first patients.
The unit, located at Eastbourne DGH, offers state-of-the-art care for day surgery patients across all our surgical specialties and is the product of more than three years of collaboration between our clinical and operational colleagues in our DAS division and the Estates and Facilities teams.
The Centre features four new operating theatres, comprehensive pre-assessment, admission, and recovery areas and will deliver around 7,000 planned procedures each year. Operating ten hours a day, five days a week, patients are able to undergo their procedure and return home to recover the same day. The creation of this new facility not only increases our capacity for same-day elective surgery but also frees up our existing theatres to carry out additional complex procedures.
This new Sussex Endoscopy Unit (SEU) which is on the first floor of SSC, was completed in Autumn 2025. This facility will provide additional endoscopy capacity through four endoscopy suites and associated patient and staff facilities, along with new decontamination facilities.
Throughout FY 25/26 we have been undertaking the last of the comprehensive enabling moves (relocation of the Stroke Unit to Cuckmere) to enable the phased modernisation/refurbishment of the main Cardiology department at EDGH which will commence in Q4 of FY25/26 and run through next 15 months. The complex and comprehensive sequencing of the scheme is essentially broken into five main phases:
· Phase 1 is the refurbishment of East Dean into Cardiology Coronary Care Unit (CCU)
· Phase 2 creates Cath Lab 3, including the movement of the CQ equipment to EDGH. At the end of this phase, EDGH will have three functional Cath Labs.
· Phase 3 utilises the space previously occupied by CCU, to create a large Recovery bed space. Admin offices will also be reconfigured and refurbished.
· Phases 4 and 5 are due to commence in early 2027, and include a large bulk store, the refurbishment of Cath Lab 2 and creation of the Pacing Theatre
Together with recent improvements in our X-ray department’s equipment and facilities we are also carrying out major replacement/upgrades of diagnostic equipment, namely the CT scanner and Interventional Radiology, both at Conquest.
Together with its own £1.5million of ESHT allocated funding, we have secured £10.3 million of additional critical infrastructure risk capital funding from NHS England. We will utilise this funding to undertake a series of projects to reduce our critical infrastructure risks, for example electrical infrastructure and fire compartmentation works.