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Jersey has an urgent need for a new hospital, the Chief Nurse and consultants told the independent planning inspector on the first day of an inquiry into the £800m 'health campus' plans for Overdale.
On the opening day of a key five-day planning inquiry to assess the merits of the application, those for and against it were able to make their opening statements.
The Government has States Assembly backing to build a ‘health campus’ on Westmount, comprising of five buildings: a main hospital, an energy centre, a training centre, a mental health centre and a multi-storey car park.
Pictured: Philip Staddon, the independent planning inspector, opening the inquiry this morning.
Planning, however, have concluded that the harms associated with the scale and design of the proposal, on balance, outweigh its “significant benefits”.
Making the case for the Our Hospital project, political lead Senator Lyndon Farnham said that there was an “urgent need” for it.
“We can only patch up and mend the current hospital for so long and after 2026, the costs rise at an exponential and alarming rate,” he said.
He conceded that there was no perfect and uncontentious site on an 9x5 island and the needs of the community would need to be balanced by the requirements of the planning law.
However, the new hospital would be a “shining example” of healthcare and it would help attract the very best medical professionals to the island.
Pictured: Proposed heights of the development at Overdale.
Senior Planning Officer Chris Jones said that Planning did not dispute the need for a new hospital but “there was no hiding” from the footprint, height and mass of the proposed building, which was “over-scaled and visually out of character with the surrounding townscape”.
This caused “serious unacceptable harm”, he added.
In the first session of the inquiry, which is being overseen by independent inspector Philip Staddon, Chief Nurse Rose Naylor set out the need for the hospital, which if approved will open in 2026.
She said that the ‘functional brief’ - a document which establishes what should be in the hospital and where - had been developed “from the bottom up” with more than 140 clinical user groups sharing their views.
A number of consultants spoke at the inquiry to stress the inadequacies of the current building.
Pictured: A new image of the proposed entrance released today.
Professor Enda McVeigh said that it was an established fact that the quality of infrastructure had a direct impact on patient outcomes, therefore any delay would cost lives.
He therefore asked, if Planning deemed that if harms outweighed the benefits, what exactly those harms were.
Dr Adrian Noon said that he had shown two young consultants, who would potentially move to the island, around the current hospital at the weekend, and they “couldn’t believe” the poor quality environment. However, he added, they were excited by the “amazing project” to build a new campus.
On the first morning, Friends of Our New Hospital interim chair Peter Funk said that there was a clear need for a new hospital.
Pictured: Peter Funk making his submission on behalf of the Friends of Our New Hospital.
“However, we have a very strong view that we do not need a new hospital at Overdale,” he said. “It is a monster building 200m long and 100m wide rising 31m in height.
“It breaches every regulation in the 2011 Island Plan and the newly approved Bridging Island Plan. Doing something in the public interest is no excuse for a poor plan. It is the wrong building in the wrong place at the wrong cost.”
The inquiry continued this afternoon looking at the design of the proposed campus.
Pictured top: A 3D mock-up model created of the proposed new hospital, which is being displayed at the inquiry.
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