Health bosses insist Eastbourne will get new hospital

The town was earmarked as one of 40 sites in the UK for a new hospital and Liberal Democrat candidates said they wanted “cast iron assurances” that it would still be happening.

An East Sussex Healthcare Trust worker told The Argus that staff at Eastbourne District General Hospital had been told that the town “would not get a hospital” and that it was a “barefaced lie”.

But hospital officials have refuted this claim and reiterated that plans are live.

The staff member said there were hopes for "some improvements" to the current building.

• READ MORE: New hospital announced for town amid £3.7 billion funding

Former health minister Maria Caulfield, MP for Lewes, said the plans were looked at in the summer and she “expected an announcement shortly” for the time scale on all new hospitals between now and the government’s target of 2030.

The Lewes MP also said that Eastbourne District General Hospital will get a two-floor surgical unit, with work expected to start in the new year with hopes of opening in summer 2024.

Liberal Democrat candidate for Eastbourne and Willingdon Josh Babarinde said: “Our community needs and deserves the brand new hospital we were promised by the Conservatives. This is critical if we’re to have any chance of returning the core services that the hospital has lost in recent years.

Eastbourne District General Hospital

“There is no sign of this new hospital we were all promised. It feels like the government is taking us for granted.”

Lewes parliamentary candidate James MacCleary said he has written to Maria Caulfield and Eastbourne MP Caroline Ansell for assurances the hospital will still be built.

The Department of Health and Social Care's "communications playbook" which was distributed to trusts in August 2021 reportedly says under its definitions of a new hospital that this could include "a major new clinical building on an existing site or a new wing of an existing hospital, provided it contains a whole new clinical service".

An East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust spokesman said: “We are working with the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England new hospital programme on our outline business case with the scheme due to be delivered in the latter half of this decade.

“At this stage a range of options are under consideration which include new buildings and refurbishment at Eastbourne District General Hospital.”

Caroline Ansell, Conservative MP for Eastbourne and Willingdon, said she was at a meeting with fellow Conservative MP Ms Caufield this week to discuss the “government’s new modular build approach”.

Modular buildings are prefabricated buildings which are constructed away from site and assembled at the final location.

Eastbourne Hospital was built in 1977 (Image: The Argus)

Ms Ansell said: “Hundreds of millions of pounds of government investment in health services in Eastbourne and East Sussex is only a good news story. 

“How this is spent will ultimately be for our hospital leaders to decide and I am working closely with them and my MP colleagues to land this once-in-a-generation spend. 

“A great deal of work is going on and we hope to know more and report back pretty imminently.  Indeed a very positive meeting about the new hospital programme took place with the trust this very week where the government’s new modular build approach was discussed.”

The Department for Health and Social Care said it has committed £3.7 billion to the hospital programme, meaning the budget has increased year on year from £580 million in 2021-22 to £1.6 billion in 2024-25.