VIDEO: First helicopter lands on £14m Royal Sussex Hospital helipad in Brighton

People cheered as a helicopter touched down on the long-awaited £14 million helipad at the Royal Sussex County Hospital for the first time. The aircraft landed shortly after 5pm on Tuesday, February 24, marking what health leaders described as a major breakthrough in a project that has faced years of delays. The helipad, constructed in […]

People cheered as a helicopter touched down on the long-awaited £14 million helipad at the Royal Sussex County Hospital for the first time.

The aircraft landed shortly after 5pm on Tuesday, February 24, marking what health leaders described as a major breakthrough in a project that has faced years of delays.

The helipad, constructed in 2018 and originally expected to open in 2019, has been beset by technical and regulatory setbacks which repeatedly pushed back its launch date.

The successful test landing represents a significant step towards making the pad fully operational.

Hospital bosses confirmed that further, more complex test runs will now take place. These will include full emergency simulations, involving dummy transfers of critically ill patients from the helicopter directly into the hospital’s specialist teams.

Dr Stephanie Tilston, Major Trauma Centre Clinical Lead at University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust, said the moment represented an “important milestone in regional emergency care”.

She said: “Today’s successful test landings bring us a step closer to making the helipad operational, so we can care for patients with the most serious life-threatening injuries and illnesses even faster than we do now.

“These initial landings allowed us to test the helipad itself, with a view to receiving sign-off from the Civil Aviation Authority.

“The next step will be to test out our processes for receiving extremely vulnerable patients and transferring them smoothly from the helicopter to the right clinical team – every second counts, and so it is essential we ensure we can perform those transfers as quickly and safely as possible.

“We are now an important step closer to delivering a fully operational helipad for people across Sussex.”

Once fully signed off, the rooftop helipad is expected to significantly cut transfer times for patients with life-threatening injuries and serious medical emergencies across Sussex, enabling direct access to specialist trauma services without the need for a secondary road ambulance transfer.