The main psychiatric hospital for children in Brighton, Hove and the wider Sussex area is set to close within weeks after a critical inspection by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).
Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (SPFT), which runs Chalkhill in Haywards Heath, said the closure will be temporary. However, the trust could not confirm when the hospital will reopen. Leaders expect the shutdown to last for several months.
Three young patients are still receiving care at Chalkhill. Councillors were told last week that the trust hopes to discharge them or transfer them to other inpatient units before the closure begins.
Chalkhill opened around 20 years ago with 18 beds. When the decision to close was taken in the summer, the unit had 12 beds. It may reopen with fewer.
The CQC has not yet released its latest inspection report, carried out in late August. But in its previous report two years ago, the regulator issued a press release highlighting major concerns. These included risks to patient safety, repeated harmful incidents, inadequate staffing, poor leadership and weak clinical oversight. Inspectors also found that an earlier improvement plan had not been fully carried out.
The report stated: “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 discussed the upcoming closure at a Brighton and Hove City Council Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee meeting on Wednesday 19 November.
He said the needs of admitted young people have become more complex and require a higher level of care than staff can currently provide at Chalkhill. He also noted significant workforce gaps, including the retirement of a long-serving consultant psychiatrist and vacancies in senior nursing roles.
Mr Child said the trust plans to recruit a new clinical team, deliver organisational training and use newly awarded funding to improve the building while no children are onsite.
Conservative councillor and consultant psychiatrist Emma Hogan questioned whether long-standing issues at Chalkhill could realistically be fixed. Mr Child responded that he believed they could, but only with focused effort and by temporarily stopping the service. He said a “dedicated pause” was necessary to resolve chronic staffing and safety challenges.
During the closure, SPFT will still be responsible for admitting children who need inpatient psychiatric care. Most will have to be placed in out-of-area units, mainly in Surrey, Hampshire and Kent. This is expected to increase costs, especially as specialist “tier 4” beds remain in short supply nationwide.
A council report explained that the closure is intended to allow SPFT to redesign the clinical model, recruit senior staff, strengthen team leadership and refurbish the unit. While Chalkhill normally provides a 12-bed mixed-gender inpatient service for children with acute mental health needs, the trust said it will not set a reopening date until building work and recruitment are complete. Bed numbers are expected to remain similar, though this will depend on the new clinical model.
Current Chalkhill staff will be permanently redeployed to other services because of the uncertain reopening date.
The CQC’s earlier inspection in 2023 found declining leadership quality, weak governance and repeated safety incidents. Neil Cox, the CQC’s deputy director of operations for the south, said leadership failures had put young people at risk and contributed to a “closed culture” where concerns were not shared openly. Staff also reported poor morale and limited support.
In July 2025, the CQC issued another warning notice to SPFT relating to other services, stating that mental health crisis care and health-based places of safety were not consistently safe, did not always protect patients’ dignity and lacked strong oversight.
SPFT maintains that Chalkhill’s closure is temporary and that it intends to reopen the hospital once major improvements are complete.
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