A hospice has been awarded a major grant to help with a move to a new home.

St Barnabas House Hospice in Worthing is planning to relocate to a purpose-built site half a mile away from its existing base in Columbia Drive.

The £10 million development will increase its capacity from 15 to 22 beds and bring facilities up to 21st century standards.

The £446,000 grant from the Department of Health is a slice of £40 million being given to hospices across England to improve palliative care services for the elderly.

The existing St Barnabas building is coming towards the end of its life and with the changes in hospice care over the past 34 years since the hospice was built, a brand new site is needed.

Chief executive Hugh Lowson (crct) said: "We are immensely grateful for this major award which will go towards the cost of providing a brand new landmark building more appropriate for hospice care in the 21st century.

"We plan to increase our capacity from 15 to 22 beds using a design of five in-patient clusters around a central nursing station.

"Each cluster will offer a combination of single bedrooms, family rooms, shared en suite bathrooms and communal lounge and dining areas, all fully equipped and with views and access to beautiful multi-sensory gardens.

"Our new hospice will enhance the physical care environment for our patients and their families, provide more choice, privacy and dignity and improve our patients' experience of their stay at St Barnabas.

"This award will pay for one of those patient clusters and although we still have a long way to go to realise our dream of a new hospice, this is a very positive step in the right direction."

At present, St Barnabas cares for more than 800 patients each year.

It costs more than £4 million a year to run the hospice, a large part of which has to be raised through donations, legacies, the hospice's chain of shops and fund-raising events and activities.

A planning application for the new development is expected to be submitted to Worthing Borough Council in the next two months.

St Peter and St James' Hospice in Wivelsfield received almost £279,000 which will go towards creating a new day room for inpatients, the landscaping of surrounding gardens, new offices for the chaplaincy and counselling teams, and the widening of doorways to patients' rooms to meet Healthcare Commission standards.

Interim chief executive Lyn (crct) Williams said: "We are absolutely thrilled by this news and very excited about taking St Peter and St James forward into this new phase.

"Our patients and their loved ones are at the heart of everything that we do and this grant will allow us to fulfil our vision of meeting the unique physical, emotional, social and spiritual needs of everyone who comes here."

The hospice is planning £700,000 worth of improvements in total which will include a new consulting room, an office for use by the welfare officer and meetings with relatives and friends, a new patient treatment room and a new nurses' station.

The Martlets Hospice in Hove got £345,000 to improve its entrance, day centre and nurses' station areas to give older patients more shelter and privacy.

Tell us your experiences of the good work carried out by hospices across Sussex byleaving a message below.