News and reports

In May 2025, Healthwatch in Sussex wanted to better understand the challenges carers face when accessing health and wellbeing services for their own health.

Healthwatch Brighton and Hove regularly evaluates its projects and reviews of health and care services to assess how effectively we have engaged with the general population of the city and its diverse communities. This Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) provides detail on the extent to which this was achieved in the last year. We present equalities data captured from 15 projects, reports detailing our engagement activities, as well as helpline data. These comprise a total of 2,174 responses.

Healthwatch Brighton and Hove conducted visits to various sites run by the University Hospitals Sussex NHS Trust (UHSx). Eight of our trained volunteers conducted these visits in October 2024.

Our visits to the Royal Sussex County Hospital, the Royal Alexandra Children’s Hospital, the Eye Hospital and various wards across the estate were part of PLACE or ‘Patient-Led Assessments of the Care Environment’. This report provides a summary of our observations from the visits. PLACE is delivered as a national programme, and all data is collected and formally analysed by NHS Digital. They will publish detailed reports after the programme has ended.

In April 2025, Healthwatch in Sussex sought people’s experiences of satisfaction with their local NHS services. This included what services people felt most satisfied with, and with which services they felt most dissatisfied.