Planning permission granted for new mental health hospital in Bexhill
22 July 2022
- Rother District Council grants planning permission for new mental health hospital
- Planning committee gave the go-ahead at its meeting yesterday (Thursday)
- New hospital will be built on empty site in Mount View Road, Bexhill
- Local communities will continue to be involved as construction progresses
Planning permission was granted yesterday (Thursday) to build a new 54-bed mental health hospital on a site in Mount View Street, Bexhill-on-Sea, to replace out-dated services at the Department of Psychiatry in Eastbourne.
Funding for the new hospital is being made available under the national eradicating mental health dormitories programme.
Construction on site is set to begin early in 2023 and will be completed by the end of 2024, beginning of 2025.
At the same time, the Council granted outline planning permission for a second phase on the same site which could potentially provide a further 72 beds, depending on further funding becoming available in the future.
Programme Director, Paula Kirkland, said: "This decision is a major milestone towards implementing the first phase of our wider vision to create new modern facilities to address all inpatient mental health needs on a single site for people across East Sussex and beyond.
"We are delighted that Rother District Council's planning committee have agreed that there is a need for a new mental health hospital and that the land in Mount View Street is a suitable site for the new facilities.
"As the project progresses, we will continue to involve the local community as much as we can to ensure that not only will the new facilities provide high quality care for people but also become a real asset to the Bexhill area."
Dr Andrew Hodson, local Medical Director for East Sussex and Mental Health Lead for NHS Sussex, added: “We welcome the planning committee’s approval and the ‘green light’ it gives us to move on to the next stage of our project.
"The new hospital will not only remove out-dated dormitory accommodation, replacing the current shared wards with individual rooms, each with ensuite bathrooms, it will also provide a modern and improved therapeutic environment for patients and create enough capacity to meet future inpatient needs. It is great news for the people of East Sussex and our local health and care system.”
The NHS East Sussex Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (SPFT) held a formal public consultation into the proposals between June and September 2021. Most people who responded to the consultation strongly supported the proposals, with the site in Mount View Street being the preferred location.
A further pre-planning application consultation with residents living near to the site was held in March 2022. Most local people either strongly agreed or tended to agree with the plans to build a new mental health hospital on the site.
Also, most people either strongly agreed or tended to agree with plans to potentially extend the site in the future to create a campus to provide all hospital-based mental health services in East Sussex.
Details of the planning application can be found on the Rother District Council website.
More details of the plans can also be found on our Redesigning Inpatient Services: East Sussex page.
Anyone wanting to share their thoughts with SPFT can do so through its dedicated email address: esxccg.eastsussex.mh@nhs.net