NHS foot clinic on the Falmer campus could add 4,500 appointments a year

A new NHS podiatry clinic at the University of Brighton’s¹ Falmer campus is expected to provide more than 4,500 extra appointments a year. It is run by Sussex Community NHS Foundation Trust^2,3,4 with the university, and podiatry students train there alongside NHS podiatrists.

The clinic sits in the Brighton Sport & Health Complex. It began seeing patients in July and was officially opened on 6 October. More than 600 people have attended appointments there so far, according to the university.

The 4,500 figure comes from the trust and the university. The trust receives around 9,300 podiatry referrals a year, and both say the extra appointments mean more people across West Sussex and Brighton & Hove will be seen sooner. A trust post written after the clinic opened in July gives a lower figure, more than 4,000 extra appointments a year.

You can’t book yourself in: the trust’s podiatry service takes referrals from GPs, nurses and allied health professionals, and it assesses each one on the day it arrives. If your case is urgent, the trust says it will contact you within 48 hours to book. Patients are told which clinic to go to when the booking is confirmed. The trust lists three clinics in Brighton and Hove: the NHS Podiatry Clinic at the Brighton Sport & Health Complex, Conway Court and Hove Polyclinic.

The service covers ulcer care, nail surgery, pain relief and diagnosing foot problems. It no longer offers routine nail cutting.

The Falmer site has more parking, blue badge spaces near the entrance and a new bus stop directly outside the clinic. Falmer station is close by.

This is the first time NHS podiatry services have been based on the university’s campus. Brighton created the UK’s first undergraduate podiatry degree and is now the only university in the south-east offering preregistration podiatry training. In its announcement in March, the university said the number of new podiatrists entering the profession has fallen by 7% since 2018.

Siobhan Melia, the trust’s chief executive, studied podiatry at Brighton. “It also has a special personal significance for me, as my own journey to becoming an NHS Chief Executive began here, as a podiatry student at the University of Brighton,” she said in remarks reported by the Argus⁵.

Barbara Winton, a podiatrist with the trust’s Brighton and Hove and North service, said in a trust post: “Having a shared workspace means we can work more closely with colleagues, discuss patient care and learn from one another.”

The opening was reported by the Argus and V2 Radio⁶.