The States are due to debate whether to ditch the current plans next month, with the Council of Ministers backing the move to rescind site approval on Gloucester Street.
However, Members could still ultimately decide to press ahead with building on the existing site.
Teacher Michel Morel, who owns a property in the Metro Apartments building on Patriotic Street, believes that independent planning inspector Philip Staddon is the first person to truly ‘stand up’ for those living near to the Gloucester Street site.
Under the last set of plans, which were rejected last week, Mr Morel said some residents would have had hospital windows just ten metres from their bedroom, kitchen or lounge windows.
Mr Staddon, who recommended that the scheme be refused planning permission, concluded that a ‘significant number’ of properties in the surrounding area would be caused ‘unreasonable harm’ by the proposed development, including ‘exceptionally severe’ reductions in daylight in some cases.
And, with the location of the new hospital once again up in the air after the latest refusal for the scheme, Mr Morel has now vowed to form a group of local residents to fight for compensation from the States if politicians pursue a third attempt at a rebuild on the Gloucester Street site.
Citing a UK law which, in certain circumstances, allows compensation to be paid to homeowners if the value of their property is affected by public works, Mr Morel said he believed that the hundreds of people who own property next to the site should be entitled to financial redress if it were to be developed for a new hospital.
He also questioned why little regard had so far been given to the impact the development would have on those properties, and said politicians and the Future Hospital team had treated the whole process as a ‘rubber-stamping exercise’.
Mr Morel, who bought his apartment off-plan in 2003, said such a hospital development would make many of the nearby properties ‘unsellable’.
He said: ‘If they do proceed with a third application I will get a group together, getting the UK government involved, if necessary. If they build a 45-metre tall building [the first submitted plan] there without any offer of compensation, it is totally unjust. The properties would be unsellable.’
He added that he did not know how much compensation should be paid but said a ‘fair system’ would need to be decided by professionals.
Mr Morel said that had the case for a rebuild been compelling and had clinicians and hospital staff backed it then he would have had more sympathy for the project.
However, without either, he now thinks the hospital needs to be built elsewhere. And he backed a suggestion from colorectal surgeon Dr Miklos Kassai for a referendum on the issue.
‘Personally, I am not experienced enough to say where it should go,’ he said. ‘My personal views would be People’s Park, Overdale, St Saviour’s Hospital or Warwick Farm. The existing site seems to me, from what I have heard, to be the one that is going to take us the longest and the site that costs more than any other site – I can’t understand why anyone would now think this is the right place to build.’
He added: ‘Philip Staddon is the only one who has stood up for us and said something that makes sense.’
