More than £2 million spent on search for new hospital site (and we still don’t know where it’s going)

Following a Freedom of Information request, Jersey Property Holdings, which has responsibility for the project, revealed that £2.2 million has been spent since 2012.

Assistant Treasury Minister Eddie Noel

This has been spent on project team costs, overheads associated with the office and administration of the project and paying external suppliers. Just over half the total cost of reviewing the potential sites was spent in the first nine months of this year.

Assistant Treasury Minister Eddie Noel, who has responsibility for Jersey Property Holdings, said that the costs were not exceptional, and represented 0.5 per cent of the planned expenditure on the new hospital.

Speculation about where the new hospital will be built has continued for months after Health Minister Andrew Green dismissed the option of building over two sites.

In September, he said that four sites were under consideration – Overdale, expanding the current Hospital site, the Waterfront or the People’s Park. He added that feasibility studies on the proposed locations were being completed.

‘When you are building a £400 million asset – the most important public building in Jersey – spending 0.5 per cent of that to make sure it is in the right place is sensible. We have to get it right.

‘In the UK, the cost of site evaluation for a new hospital is around one to two per cent of the spend. We are operating at around half of that.’

Deputy Noel also said that there was ‘a little bit more work to do’ in evaluating the four remaining sites, but hoped that a proposition outlining the recommended location would be lodged with the States early next year.

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