A busy service road is being closed for the next nine months as building work gets under way at the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton.
The hospital said that as a result the routes available to patients and visitors around the Royal Sussex would change from 5pm this afternoon (Friday 22 April).
The building work is part of the £485 million modernisation – known as the 3Ts redevelopment.
The hospital said: “Most of the hospital’s South Service Road is being shut for nine months. This includes the pedestrian crossing that leads into the base of the Thomas Kemp Tower.”
3Ts director Duane Passman said: “Closing the service road is key to the building of both the helideck and the ‘stage 1 building’.
“We cannot keep the pedestrian crossing open while we are building around and above the area. It simply is not safe.
“Our advice to all patients and visitors coming to the front of the hospital, in Eastern Road, is to use the main entrance which has the canopy above it. All the buildings on the hospital site can be reached from there.
“Navigating the site has always been a challenge. Closing this route actually reduces the number of ways into the hospital for pedestrians and will make the site easier to navigate.
“All our staff have been informed of the change, our site signs have been updated and the maps we hand out to patients and visitors have been altered to reflect the change.”
Over the coming months the entire south east quarter of the hospital, except for the Cancer Centre, will become the construction site for the first of the hospital’s new buildings.
The stage 1 building will take a little over four years to complete and will open its doors in the summer of 2020.
The helideck on the Thomas Kemp Tower should be completed late next year.
Access to the RSCH from its main Eastern Road canopy entrance requires the mobility and strength to use the extremely steep ramp that was put over the stairs there many years ago. It is the same 45 degree angle that the stairs had. Not possible for very many patients. Access otherwise is up the steep hills either side of the RSCH.
Yes one would think that spending that much money it would be able to construct a better way of allowing access whilst work is being carried out Oh well it is only 4 years ,how long to build a completely new Hospital?
This closure may, effectively, now make the hospital inaccessible for some people unless there is a chair and someone to push it up the access slope at the front door. VERY steep and hard to do safely.
If you have mobility problems ask at reception for assistance. You might have to wait a while but I’m sure they have people able to help.
How do patients get access to A & E if you at closing Bristol gate? Are you opening the upper Abbey road entrance then?
would it not be better to construct a new hospital on farmland by the university then they could have parking facilities that a first class teaching hospital needs the road /rail access is already there just needs Falmar road upgrading . this would solve modernisation problems in the future