Hospital starts £5m A&E expansion project

A hospital in Nottinghamshire is set to benefit from a £5m project to expand the capacity of its emergency department.

The changes at King's Mill Hospital in Sutton-in-Ashfield will provide more space for patients with less serious conditions and increase the number of beds for more seriously ill patients from 26 to 40.

The hospital's ambulance access zone is to double from four to eight spaces, which is expected to shorten the handover period and get crews back on to the streets faster.

While the first part of the project is expected to be completed by next month, the full scheme of work will not be finished until February 2028, with some planned changes requiring planning permission.

King's Mill Hospital serves people in north Nottinghamshire, and parts of Derbyshire and Lincolnshire.

Monthly emergency admissions have gone up from more than a third in a decade, from 13,000 in July 2016 to more than 18,000 in July 2026.

Richard Kemp, divisional director of nursing for Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, is hoping the initial developments "will give us more space while we undertake the second phase of the works".

"This expansion is going to make a real difference, and hopefully we will be able to offload ambulances a lot quicker and get them back out into the community where they can respond to patients," he said.

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