Joint bid for Brighton's first undergraduate medical school

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The Universities of Sussex and Brighton will have to wait until the first quarter of 2001 to discover if their joint bid to create Brighton's first undergraduate medical school, submitted this week, is successful.

If the proposals go ahead, the new Brighton and Sussex Medical School will welcome its first 128 students in 2003. The Royal Sussex County Hospital would be the main teaching hospital for the clinical curriculum, with additional teaching facilities at the universities' Falmer sites.

The school would have a syllabus modelled on that of the University of Southampton's top-rated medical school. The proposed venture is expected to enhance patient care in Brighton and Sussex, expand the number of medically related jobs and provide greater opportunities for research in science and health-related fields.

The bid, made with the support of the NHS South East Region, is in response to a Government report recommending an increase in the number of medical students in the UK by more than 1,000. Funding for the school (an estimated £28.5 million) will come from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and the Department of Health.

Professor Alasdair Smith, Vice-Chancellor, said: "The proposed new school will be firmly based on the established strengths of the two universities in educating and training health professionals and in science teaching and research. Both institutions are committed to innovation in teaching and provide an ideal base for a forward-looking approach to medical education."

Professor Michael Whiting, Dean of the Faculty of Health at the University of Brighton and Chair of the Brighton Health Care NHS trust, said: "I believe the partnership between the two universities and the NHS locally provides an outstanding opportunity for expanding undergraduate places and developing medical education. This will meet the needs of the national plans for the future of the NHS."

Peter Dennis, currently Assistant to the Vice-Chancellor and formerly responsible for Health Sciences in the Academic Registry at the University of Brighton, will be seconded for one year from January to develop the bid.