New Hospital: £23m spent so far and time to think again

Thursday 11 January 2018

More than £23million has so far been spent to choose a site, agree a funding package and put together a strongly rejected planning application for Jersey's new hospital.

To put that figure in context it is almost the same amount for the total building cost of the island's new Police Headquarters, or about three times the price of a new primary school - the recently completed St Martin's School cost around £7million.

Earlier this week, Environment Minister Deputy Steve Luce said he couldn't ignore the report of Philip Staddon, an independent planning inspector, who described the future hospital as "over-dominant, obtrusive and alien," and strongly rejected the planning application, sending the project team literally back to the drawing board. 

An Express Freedom of Information (FOI) request revealed in October that by August last year nearly £17.4million had been spent on paving the way for the new hospital. This included over £9 million on several technical, financial and legal advisors. Another £5.4 million were spent on offsite preliminary works.

Pictured: A breakdown of the amounts spent on the new hospital project.

£2.4 million were spent in just six months in 2017, as a previous FOI request showed the total expenses amounted to just over £15 million at the end of April.

Those costs come in addition to the nearly £5 million which were spent over four years to determine which of a list of 41 sites was the best place to build the new hospital.

It is, however, unclear if the £17.4 million was spent between 2016 and 2017 only, or if that includes any amount spent before that. A FOI request dated from March 2016 revealed that just over £2.2million had been spent on the new hospital project between 2012 and early 2016, the majority in advisor fees and relocation works.

It is also unclear if the salary of the five people on the project team, including two project directors, a client lead and two project support officers, is also included in the total. The salary costs came to £768,373 for the period between the time the project commenced in February 2012 and January 2016.

Pictured: The new Police Headquarters, a five-storey building, cost approximatively £24 million.

This would bring the total of expenses to over £23 million.

Earlier this week, the Treasury Minister, Senator Alan McLean, has already warned that costs could go up as a result of the rejected planning application. There are concerns that the £70 million contingency agreed by the States will not be enough to deal with the refusal but the Treasury Minister is also wary of fluctuating interest rates, which will inevitably drive up the costs. "The longer we have to wait, the greater the risk there could be some changes,” he explained.