The main psychiatric hospital for children from Brighton and Hove and the whole of Sussex is to close within weeks after a critical inspection by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).
The closure of Chalkhill, in Haywards Heath, will be temporary, according to Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (SPFT), which runs the unit. But the trust could not say when it would reopen although the closure would last for months rather than weeks.
Three patients were still being treated at Chalkhill, councillors were told last week, with the aim of discharging them or finding them an inpatient bed elsewhere before the unit closes.
It opened about 20 years ago and used to have 18 beds. At the time of the decision to close the unit, in the summer, it had just 12 beds. It may have even fewer when it reopens.
The CQC has yet to publish its report after inspecting Chalkhill in late August but when it published its previous report, two years ago, it also published a press release.
It said: “The CQC has lowered the rating for Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust’s child and adolescent mental health (CAMHS) ward at Chalkhill from good to requires improvement following an inspection in June that found improvements were needed.
“This inspection was carried out because CQC had received concerns regarding
- the safety and wellbeing of young people using the service
- high levels of incidents leading to harm
- staff training and competence
- low staffing numbers
- ineffective observations of young people
- poor leadership and support
“Before the inspection the trust along with the commissioners of the service had identified some safety concerns and had an action plan in place to address them.
“However, the action plan had not been fully implemented and some of these areas remained a concern during this inspection.”
The report said: “Staff weren’t always able to keep young people safe from avoidable harm. There were high levels of repeated incidents which caused harm and potential harm to young people.”
SPFT chief operating officer John Child spoke about the impending closure at Hove Town Hall at a meeting of Brighton and Hove City Council’s Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee last Wednesday (19 November).
He said: “We’re seeing young people with much more complex problems and in need of a greater level of care. We’re concerned that the way that they can be treated in Chalkhill doesn’t meet their needs.
“We have some key clinical vacancies. A long-serving consultant psychiatrist has retired and we have vacancies in some of our key nurse leadership roles.
“We want to recruit a new team and complete some organisational development training with them.
“We have been awarded some money to make the building better and it’s good to do (the work) while there are no children there.”
Conservative councillor Emma Hogan, a consultant psychiatrist, said: “It sounds as if Chalkhill has been in dire straits for quite some time – the CQC visit in 2023 and then the chronic issues to 2025. Do you honestly think that all the issues are rectifiable?”
Mr Child said: “Yes, I do. But I think that they require close attention and considerable work which is why we made the decision that we did.
“It’s a very difficult decision and we recognise that it has significant impacts on young people and their families for a period of time and while placing people out of area.
“We did not think that we would be able to make the improvements with the service and the team in situ. It requires a dedicated pause and stocktake.
“There is a chronicity to the challenges. It’s not untypical of similar units, with the challenges that they face, with the staffing issues that they face, with the changes in presentation.
“But it’s our service. We need to be accountable for it and we need to make those changes.”
In the meantime, the trust would still have a duty to admit children and young people who needed inpatient care. It would probably have to rely on out-of-area private providers. And it added that this would almost certainly prove costly.
Mr Child said: “Tier 4 beds nationally are still under pressure – sometimes with none available across the whole country (and) recruitment, particularly in the area of CAMHS, is a national challenge.”
He hoped that opening a new service with a fresh start would prove more attractive when trying to recruit. He acknowledged that, previously, the unit had relied too much and too often on agency staff.
A report to the council’s Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee said: “SPFT plans to temporarily close Chalkhill Hospital, an inpatient acute unit for young people located in Hayward’s Heath.
“The temporary closure will enable SPFT to redesign the clinical service model for the hospital, to recruit staff and to make physical improvements to the building.”
Chalkhill delivers a “tier 4 general adolescent unit inpatient mental health service” as part of the child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) for the area.
The report said: “Chalkhill is run by Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (SPFT) and is a 12-bed mixed gender inpatient unit where children and young people are admitted if they require assessment and treatment for acute mental health needs.
“The unit is located in the grounds of the Princess Royal Hospital, Hayward’s Heath.
“In October 2023, Chalkhill was inspected by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and the CQC’s inspection report made a number of recommendations for improvement.
“Subsequently, SPFT has sought to implement these recommendations, alongside internally identified improvement actions.
“The CQC carried out a further unannounced inspection in August and raised concerns regarding patient safety.
“Due to lack of sustained improvement, the trust made the decision to temporarily close Chalkhill.
“The temporary closure will allow the trust to
- Redesign the clinical model to ensure the clinical offer is suitable to meet the needs of the children and young people who require inpatient care, following changes in overall acuity and in clinical presentation taking into account national and regional best practice
- Recruit to key clinical leadership roles including the consultant psychiatrist / responsible clinician and nurse consultants
- Complete a programme of organisational development for the new leadership team once recruitment has been completed
- Undertake estates work to improve the inpatient environment of Chalkhill to ensure it reflects the needs of the patient group
“The trust has made additional investments in community services to enhance opportunities to treat young people at home while Chalkhill is closed.
“For young people who do require inpatient admission, SPFT is able to place (them) into young people’s units in Surrey, Hampshire and Kent and the processes of bed searching remain unchanged.
“The nearest unit for people from Brighton and Hove is located at Horley, on the Surrey and Sussex border.
“No young people will be placed on adult wards.
“At the time of writing, Chalkhill currently has three young people admitted.
“There are detailed clinical plans in place to support either community discharge or transfer to another inpatient unit as required by the proposed closure date in early December 2025.
“There is currently no date set for Chalkhill to reopen. The reopening will be dependent on planned building works and recruitment to key clinical roles.
“However, SPFT has been clear that the closure is temporary and it fully intends to reopen.
“It is anticipated that bed numbers in the refreshed unit will be similar to current levels although the details of this will be determined by the new clinical model.
“Given the uncertainty about the reopening date, current Chalkhill staff will be permanently rather than temporarily redeployed across other clinical services.”
After the CQC inspection in 2023 the watchdog issued “a warning notice to focus the trust’s attention on making rapid and widespread improvements regarding good governance”.
The CQC’s deputy director of operations in the south, Neil Cox, said: “When we inspected Chalkhill, we found a decline in the quality of leadership at the service which was having an impact on the level of care being provided to the young people using this service.
“It was incredibly concerning some young people had come to harm and others had been put at risk because leaders had poor oversight and didn’t always have good enough systems in place to keep them safe.
“Leaders didn’t always manage risks well and they didn’t learn from incidents when things went wrong to stop them from happening again.
“Also, despite the trust having an action plan in place, we didn’t feel assured those improvements were happening quickly enough.
“We also saw there were signs of a closed culture at the service. The trust didn’t do everything they could to ensure they were being open and transparent and young people told us they didn’t always feel safe or supported to raise concerns.
“Staff confirmed this, as well as telling us the impact this had on their morale as a result. Leaders need to do more to listen to the experiences of people using the service as well as to staff to make improvements.”
Earlier this year, the CQC issued spoke out about other services provided by SPFT, saying: “We served a warning notice on Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust on Friday 11 July 2025 for failing to ensure that the care and treatment of patients who used the mental health crisis services and health-based places of safety received care that was consistently safe, appropriate, met their needs, upheld their privacy and dignity rights and protected them from avoidable harm.
“The governance systems in place were not robust and did not provide adequate oversight and ongoing monitoring of the quality and safety of care provided.”
The CQC said that its concerns related to
- The trust’s Department of Psychiatry
- Langley Green Hospital in Crawley
- Meadowfield Hospital in Worthing
- Mill View Hospital in Hove
- Woodlands in Hastings
