After years of twists, turns and costly setbacks in the controversial saga, Deputy Chief Minister Lyndon Farnham, who is the chairman of the Our Hospital Political Oversight Group, was due to announce the preferred site from the two remaining options – the People’s Park and Overdale.
And details on the decision-making process to get to that point are also due to be published shortly.
However, it will not be a done deal as the decision of ministers, which is understood to have been made last week, has to be debated by the States, and is believed to be due for consideration on 17 November.
Before then Members are due, on 20 October, to debate Deputy Trevor Pointon’s proposition calling for Warwick Farm and St Saviour’s Hospital to be added to the shortlist of potential sites, meaning politicians could have two opportunities to thrash out the issue in the coming weeks.
The new hospital saga began in 2012 when then-Health Minister Anne Pryke announced plans for a dual site at the current premises and Overdale.
Her successor, Andrew Green, retracted the idea, favouring a single-site option instead, and produced a new shortlist of sites that included the People’s Park.
Following a public backlash, the park was withdrawn from the list in 2016 before it was agreed later that year that rebuilding on the current site would be the best option.
But those proposals also came unstuck when Environment Minister Steve Luce rejected a planning application for the site in 2017 on the recommendation of planning inspector Philip Staddon, who described the proposed building as ‘over-dominant, obtrusive and alien’.
And the project suffered a further blow in January 2019 when current Environment Minister John Young blocked revised proposals, again on the recommendation of Mr Staddon.
A month later the States voted in favour of a proposition lodged by Deputy Russell Labey to drop Gloucester Street as a potential site altogether.
The move forced the States to write off £27 million of the £45 million that had been spent on the project up to that point, without any construction work having taken place.
An amendment to Deputy Labey’s proposition, lodged by Constable Simon Crowcroft, to bar the People’s Park from being selected as a future site was also passed.
But in July this year the government, to the ire of Mr Crowcroft, put the park back on the table as part of a five-strong ‘final’ shortlist of sites, which also included land at Five Oaks, Millbrook playing fields, St Andrew’s Park, at First Tower, and Overdale.
The list was reduced to the final two sites at the start of September.
