A consultation ran earlier this year to share designs for the project.
Politicians voted against that standalone debate, with Deputy Binet urging that there would be “nothing opaque whatsoever about the information presented at the Government Plan debate”.
And the 2025 Budget – released earlier this month – came with the announcement that this Government intends to put £710 million towards the Hospital project, and that construction of the acute facilities will be completed at the end of 2028.
But during the debate, Deputy Binet had some choice words for the backbenchers who were seeking to ensure that the finer details of how to fund the initial phases of the island’s “largest ever single capital project” were not wrapped up in debates for the government’s general spending plans.
Pictured: Health Minister Tom Binet.
Political interference – whether that is from members of former Chief Minister Kristina Moore’s Council of Ministers or divisive backbenchers – would not be tolerated, he suggested.
So while it seems to be full steam ahead for the moment, Express asked the Minister: what else could stop the £710 million project in its tracks?
What is a risk register?
Deputy Binet has not coined this term, but rather it is “standard practice” to put together one of these before starting a large-scale capital project.
The register is a document that lists all risks identified and includes additional information about each one – who and where it might come from, and how it could be mitigated.
The whole point of a risk register, in effect, is to put mitigations in place to stop those risks from ever becoming a problem. Its job is to eliminate risk, in a sense.
The Health Minister explained: “As with all projects across Government, the New Healthcare Facilities Programme follows standard practice to utilise risk registers as a critical tool for the Programme’s project management and governance.
“However, by documenting these risks on the register, the Programme team is able to assess potential impacts and put in place proactive mitigation measures to address them.
“Given that the Programme is a large, complex healthcare programme of works, our governance for the Programme remains very robust.”
Political and public scrutiny
Deputy Binet did not mince his words in the debate – and he did not mince his words with Express when he said “given the past history of Jersey’s hospital projects, political and public scrutiny continue to be considered as Programme risks, especially in attracting contracting partners to build the new healthcare facilities”.
Mitigations against those risks include “good communication”, “timely sharing of deliverables with stakeholders”, and “adopting stakeholder feedback where it is possible to do so”.
This risk has indeed detailed the project in the past, with the scrapped Our Hospital project branded unaffordable and unpopular.
Supply chain robustness
Another risk, Deputy Binet said, is “supply chain robustness”, a risk that “would be anticipated from a Programme of this scale”.
Due to being an island, Jersey has long struggled with its air and sea links – and weak spots in the island’s supply chain were highlighted in a report published by the Economic and International Affairs Scrutiny Panel last week.
The Supply Chain Resilience Review – which considered evidence gathered in 2023 as part of a review of the island’s supply chain resilience – included nine recommendations, which included updating Jersey’s ageing harbour infrastructure, among others.
Inflation
It is no surprise that inflation is also on the risk register.
While the Retail Price Index (the rate at which costs are going up) has dropped from its March 2023 peak of 12.7% to where it currently sits at 5%, the gross inflation since mid-2012 – when the hospital project began – is 52%.
This means that spades which are now in the ground will cost one and a half times more than they would have in 2012.
And costs are increasing in all areas, including construction and supplies, which means the longer the Government waits, the more expensive things become.
Just recently, several large construction companies have folded citing high costs and a market downturn. Their departing plea was for the Government to “speed up” capital projects.
Planning
Anyone familiar with the Les Sablons planning application saga, or the Waterfront development planning saga, or any of the other planning sagas will realise why “the ability to achieve a successful planning determination” is also on the register.
Whether the concern is that the application will take too long to be approved (all the while costs are increasing further) or that it will be rejected all together (resulting in an even longer wait), the Planning department remains a real headache for developers like Le Masurier.
Its managing director Brian McCarthy said the “flawed” and “broken” system – to which improvements are being made – was holding up progress and putting the viability of projects at risk.
Planning, supply chains, inflation, and more – the Hospital truly sits at a cross-section of issues the island is currently facing.