French architects visit potential hospital sites

French architects visit potential hospital sites

The company, based in Nantes, has offered to carry out a feasibility study of the three potential sites for £60,000.

Last year the JEP revealed that a group of politicians, including Assistant Chief Minister Chris Taylor, visited France to hear AIA Life Designers’ plans to deliver Jersey’s new hospital on a greenfield site for £90 million.

And now this paper has seen an email from the firm, addressed to members of the Future Hospital Review Panel, stating that AIA has since visited Jersey to study three sites – St Saviour’s Hospital, Warwick Farm and Overdale Hospital – that have previously been shortlisted as suitable plots for the new facility.

The firm has also offered to carry out feasibility studies on the three sites if turned by States Members.

However, Health Minister Richard Reouf said AIA had not contacted him about their visit. He also stressed that if planning permission was granted to build on the current site, hospital services in the new facility would be phased in from 2021. He questioned why Islanders would want to ‘go back to square one, waste approximately £30 million of costs and incur a delay of ten more years’ in order to move to a new hospital built elsewhere on the Island.

The news comes as 12 months ago today, former Environment Minister Steve Luce rejected plans to build the new hospital on the current site owing to concerns that the proposals were ‘over-dominant, obtrusive and alien’.

Following that decision, the Future Hospital team revised its plans and have now proposed a wider six-storey building on the current site, extending onto Kensington Place, instead of the nine-storey building originally proposed. Funds of £466 million have been agreed by the States Assembly to pay for the build.

In September a second public planning inquiry was held by independent planning inspector Philip Staddon – who had recommended that the initial plans be rejected – and he presented his report to Environment Minister John Young on 10 December. Deputy Young is still to make a decision on the latest plans and declined to comment yesterday on when he would make an announcement.

Meanwhile, last month Chief Minister John Le Fondré said he would lodge a proposition asking States Members whether they endorsed the decision made by the previous Assembly to build on the current site in a ‘simple yes or no’ question.

The email from AIA, addressed to Deputy Kevin Pamplin and dated 14 December, says: ‘We understand that a States debate will take place in the new year when the decision on whether to build your new hospital on Gloucester Street will be made. If the decision is not to build on Gloucester Street, we would like to inform you that we would be willing to carry out a feasibility study on the three sites mentioned above.

‘To do this, we need to know and understand your medical project requirements which would include a complete list of everything that you require in your new hospital, including the size of each area.

‘It would then take us two months from being commissioned to carry out and deliver this study. The cost would be: For one site £24k, two sites £42k and three sites £60k.’

In November Mr Taylor, along with hospital review board colleague Deputy Trevor Pointon and Public Accounts Committee member Deputy Carina Alves, visited a hospital which AIA built in Plérin in Brittany.

AIA has now invited the Future Hospital Review Panel to discuss the plans further either in France or Jersey.

When asked by the JEP whether he had been in contact with AIA about their plans, the Health Minister said no.

Deputy Renouf added: ‘I acknowledge and respect that others may have opinions that differ from my own with respect to the approved scheme. But an Assembly decision has been made which will deliver for the Island a safe, sustainable and affordable hospital adjacent to the current General Hospital.

‘We can progress it as soon as the planning consent is given. Why would we want to go back to square one, waste approximately £30 million of costs and incur a delay of ten more years before we could move to a new hospital built elsewhere?

‘What conditions will staff and patients have to endure if we need to keep the present unfit-for-purpose hospital running for the next ten years? There is the urgent need to replace our current General Hospital.’

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