Hospital funding déjà-vu as debate delay threatened again

Wednesday 06 December 2017

Ministers have vowed to push on with a vote on how to pay for the £466million new hospital next week amid concerns that the architectural plans are still yet to be approved.

A specialist panel tasked with reviewing the project – the largest and most expensive to ever have been funded from the public purse – concluded that there were several “critical” threats facing the project.

These included the fact that Planning permission is still yet to be granted, a main contractor is not yet appointed, and that several properties from Kensington Place necessary for the development are still to be purchased. 

However, Opus Corporate Finance, an external adviser appointed by the Panel, considered the current funding plans to be pragmatic.

Deputy Simon Brée, Chairman of the Future Hospital Review Panel, said: “It is clear that a significant amount of work has been undertaken in providing the detail for the new hospital and its funding mechanism. However, the Panel is unconvinced that a debate should take place in the absence of planning approval and asks the Treasury Minister to defer the debate until the final planning decision is known.”

Pictured: Among the Future Hospital Review Panel's concerns was the fact that properties in Kensington Place were still yet to be purchased, and the Planning Application had not yet been approved.

But the Minsters have firmly rejected the idea.

“We know we need a new hospital and we know we need to pay for it. The planning inspector’s remit is the outline design of the proposed hospital, not whether we should build one or how we should pay for it,” Health Minister Andrew Green stated.

Treasury Minister Senator Alan Maclean added: “When the Panel’s advisers have agreed that our funding proposals ‘make sense’ and that ‘it would be wise to take advantage of the current market’, what doesn’t make sense is to delay the debate and decision on the funding. We need to move forward with this critical project.” 

The Future Hospital project, which will be comparable in scale to the UK’s HS2 railway line, has already come under months of delays.

Pictured: Hospital funding plans were torn up several times this year, before the Treasury Minister put forward his final 'blended' solution.

Plans on how to fund it were due to be decided in January this year, but it emerged that the idea being put forward at the time was actually in breach of the Public Finances Law.

In the months following, the funding plans came under further last-minute delays amid speculation that a private individual had offered an alternative proposal.

The Treasury Minister then put forward an amended version of his original idea – a bond supplemented with money from the States’ ‘rainy day fund’ – which is due to be debated and voted upon next Tuesday.

Despite their push for a vote delay, the Panel acknowledged the serious need for a new hospital development. They said that the current facility did not meet “modern standards” and contained parts of “poor quality.”

Pictured: The review panel acknowledged the need to update and replace parts of the current hospital with a new premises, noting that some areas were of "poor quality."

The panel also noted potential constraints with regards to parking spaces. Recent developments in St Helier including RBC’s new officers and the IFC are expected to generate additional demand of over 600 spaces. The Westaway Park, meanwhile, was found to include just 14 spaces for patients.

They have since called on the Infrastructure Minister to commission a review of the impact on parking and traffic, specifically in the Westaway Court area.