A multi-million-pound improvement programme to expand the Emergency Department at Worthing Hospital began on 22 November with a special ground-breaking event.
Urgent and Emergency Care and Capital Development colleagues from University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust were joined by invited guests and construction partner, Morgan Sindall Construction, to celebrate building works getting underway for a new Urgent Treatment Centre (UTC) at the West Sussex hospital.
Morgan Sindall Construction and Crowther Architects were appointed to the project by the Trust, and the UTC was procured via SCAPE, a leading UK public sector procurement authority.
Worthing Hospital’s new single-storey steel-framed facility will include a large waiting room, plus 12 consultation rooms and clinical support areas. The development will also see the existing A&E entrance relocated to facilitate construction of the new building. The Trust and Morgan Sindall say ‘extensive collaboration and coordination will be required throughout to ensure minimal disruption to the busy hospital’s operations’ – including during the infilling of the existing courtyard, which is surrounded on three sides by existing buildings, and when breaking through existing perimeter walls. The project will also involve extensive works within existing areas to provide electricity, water, and heating services.
Elements of the construction process requiring especially careful attention will include reducing noise and vibration to the nearby A&E, maternity, and X-ray areas, as well as when materials and equipment need to be moved across the hospital’s ‘blue light’ route.
Worthing Hospital’s Emergency Department is west Sussex’s busiest, seeing around 100,000 people every year, with demand growing by around 5 per cent annually, mostly driven by a rise in the number of people coming to the department by themselves for urgent care. The new UTC will treat at least 40,000 patients a year.
Following a 10-month construction programme and clinical commissioning period, patients can expect to be using the new facility from Autumn 2025. Once open, work will begin on the Same Day Emergency Care unit in the space vacated in the hospital’s East Wing by the current UTC.
Hospital director, Stephen Mardlin, said: “We’re delighted to see construction begin on this £7 m expansion of our Emergency Department because it will have such a transformative effect for our patients, A&E colleagues, and the rest of the hospital. Located right at the front of the hospital, this development will create a new entrance for all urgent walk-in attendances, a larger waiting room, and 12 new consultation rooms and clinical support areas. It also clears the way for us to develop a Same Day Emergency Care (SDEC) unit for the first time in the hospital, to be situated where the current UTC is.”
Hospital director for Nursing, Tori Cooper, added: “We’re responding to the needs of our local population, and in particular our more elderly and frail patients. Both the UTC and SDEC will enable us to improve care for older people by providing treatment more quickly at the front door of the hospital that will help them avoid being admitted for a ward stay.”
