More details emerge about future hospital highway

Tuesday 02 March 2021

Designers have provided a first glimpse at how the future hospital highway could look.

Released at a neighbourhood forum last week, the Our Hospital project team explained that the Westmount Road access route to the new Overdale build is now expected to be 14 metres wide.

That will include a 4m pedestrian and cyclist-dedicated ‘Active Travel Route’, and a 6.7m carriageway, with around 1.5m allowances left on either side for physical barriers, walls or verges, which will be “minimised where possible”.

Pictured: A birds-eye view of how the road could look, with the 'Active Travel Route' marked in orange.

The carriageway, the plans stated, has been designed to allow room for “two buses to pass each other”.

Its width was based on advice provided by Government, they said, rather than being a legal requirement.

Some had previously raised concerns that the key reason for creating the road was to allow construction vehicles to access the site, but the Deputy Chief Minister with political responsibility for the project, Senator Lyndon Farnham, had denied this.

Pictured: A cross-section of the road.

Planners also explained that a “significant” amount of infill will be required over the area of the Bowls Club – which will be relocating to Warwick Farm from its base of over a century – to bring it up to the height of the area colloquially known as ‘Hangman’s Corner’.

The Westmount Road access route will form part of the overall Our Hospital planning application, rather than being presented to the Planning Department for consideration separately, which was the Government’s original intention.

As the overall project will be subject to a Public Inquiry, there will be no third party rights of appeal. 

Project Director Richard Bannister previously said the decision to opt for a single ‘all or nothing’ planning application was taken in order to avoid delays to the project. 

Pictured: The Jersey Bowling Club 

Also featuring as part of the same planning application will be the construction of a ‘Knowledge Block’ – an administrative block with facilities for health staff welfare and training – on a field opposite the crematorium that could be the site of a ‘lost’ Neolithic monument.

Société Jersiaise told Express that they are hoping the Government will allow the area to be properly excavated before pressing ahead with the project. 

The hospital project’s Heritage Advisor, Steven Bee, said he believed that “anything of historical interest or importance in the field is already in a fragmentary state due to repeated ploughing”, but nonetheless pledged to keep an eye on the matter.

Video: Field 1550 - which has been earmarked for the hospital's 'Knowledge Block' - could be the site of a Neolithic monument.

“…As the scheme is at an early master-planning stage, the Delivery Partner will continue to take account of this as part of overall heritage matters. This will involve a watching brief and trial trenching to monitor any remains as part the building work, in line with best industry practice and considering this is a site with no statutory protection," he said.

“There will not be a separate planning application in relation to this site as it will form part of the main hospital and access planning application, which will carefully take into account all of the historical aspects of the project.”