Laing O’Rourke has been appointed to deliver a £250 million cancer centre at the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton. Funded through the New Hospitals Programme and the Department of Health and Social Care, the development will establish a regional Centre of Excellence in cancer care, serving more than 60,000 patients across Sussex each year.
The new facility will be located adjacent to the Louisa Martindale Building, which Laing O’Rourke completed in 2023, and represents the second phase of the hospital’s 3Ts redevelopment programme.
The multi-storey building will feature a high-precision radiotherapy suite in the basement, expanded outpatient clinics and assessment areas on the upper levels, and a top-floor inpatient ward with panoramic views of the sea. The designs emphasise patient wellbeing and incorporate cutting-edge technologies, including AI-enabled clinical research spaces.
A dedicated Oncology Acute Assessment area is expected to reduce A&E attendances for more than 1,000 patients annually. In addition, public realm improvements will create landscaped gardens linking the new centre to the Louisa Martindale Building.
Peter Lyons, Laing O’Rourke’s managing director for healthcare, highlighted that lessons learned from the adjacent project would be applied to enhance efficiency and minimise disruption. He noted the continued use of digital design tools and offsite manufacturing, though specific suppliers have not been disclosed.
Dr Sarah Westwell, consultant clinical oncologist and chief of service for cancer, described the centre as a space that will provide “privacy, dignity and hope” to patients while supporting integrated research initiatives.
The client for the scheme is University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust. Unlike the 10 New Hospitals Programme sites being delivered using approximately 80 per cent modular construction, this scheme will follow a more traditional build approach.
