The Royal Alexandra Children's Hospital is a children's hospital located within the grounds of the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton on the south coast of England. It provides outpatient services, inpatient facilities, intensive care and a 24-hour emergency care service for children referred by GPs and other specialists. It is managed by the Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust. The hospital originally stood on Dyke Road in the Montpelier area of Brighton. Local architect Thomas Lainson's red-brick and terracotta building, in the Queen Anne style, was opened by the Prince and Princess of Wales in 1881. It remained in use for more than a century before being replaced by a new building at the main Royal Sussex County Hospital site. The new facility opened in June 2007, and has won architectural awards for its innovative design. The future of the Dyke Road site has been uncertain since the move to the new premises was first considered in 2001; Lainson's buildings and their later additions were threatened with demolition until 2009, when a developer was refused planning permission to replace the hospital with flats. Brighton & Hove City Council's latest planning briefs state that any redevelopment of the site should incorporate Lainson's original building. History Western Road and Dyke Road Hospitals dedicated to the treatment of children have existed in England since the mid-19th century: the first opened in Liverpool in 1851. By this time, Brighton was a rapidly growing town with a history of proactively establishing social, educational and medical institutions. In response to a meeting at Brighton Town Hall on 23 June 1868, local doctor R.P.B. Taaffe founded the town's first children's hospital, the Brighton Hospital for Sick Children, at 178 Western Road on 3 August of that year. Two years later, it moved to the former Church Hill School, a disused building on Dyke Road; Bishop of Chichester Richard Durnford conducted the reopening ceremony on 14 July 1871. Although this had 20 beds in the main ward, an eight-bed ward for bone disorders and an isolation ward for infectious diseases, within ten years it was felt necessary to move to another larger building. Thomas Lainson, who entered practice in the early 1860s, was a prolific and eclectic local architect. By 1880, his works included residential terraces in the Italianate style, places of worship in diverse styles (Romanesque Revival and Neo-Byzantine), a High Gothic working men's club