CANCER patients are concerned they will never see a promised new radiotherapy unit because of major funding delays.

The East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust announced last July that a new radiotherapy centre was under construction at Eastbourne District General Hospital, which would significantly reduce the need for cancer patients to travel to Brighton or Maidstone for vital treatment.

The £15 million investment, funded by Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust, would provide two Linacs (the linear accelerator machines used to deliver radiotherapy) within a fully equipped radiotherapy facility.

In November, however, it was reported that building work had ground to a halt because of delays in funding from the Department of Health.

Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust – which put the initial money into the project – said then that building work would begin again in January once a new round of government funding was released.

But that hasn’t happened, and The Sussex Cancer Partnership Group now says the situation is worrying across the county.

Margaret Ticehurst, chairwoman of the Sussex Cancer Partnership Group, said “We were told at a meeting at the beginning of November the unit would open in April 2016, but now they say it won’t be until the summer. If the work doesn’t start again soon it will just go back and back.

‘Presently the Eastbourne site is mothballed and the engineers, builders, project managers redeployed. To reactive the site and get the necessary staff back in will take time and more money.

‘Travel to Maidstone for patients in Hastings and points east is as difficult as a journey to Brighton.

‘Until the pressure is lifted on Brighton then the whole of Sussex is affected. With more and more cancellations interfering with courses of treatment and queues forming to even get onto the lists we find more and more patients refuse to even consider treatment and people are dying.’

She said that Sussex should be entitled to 10 machines but the group has had to accept this will be scaled back to just six or seven.

The Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust say they are building a radiotherapy treatment centre in Eastbourne and they expect construction work to begin again when the funding is received from the Department of Health.