During a hearing of the Future Hospital Review Panel, Deputy Chief Minister Lyndon Farnham was asked about the missing figures, with Deputy Inna Gardiner suggesting the outline business case for the scheme was ‘misleading’ without them.
Senator Farnham, who has political responsibility for the hospital project, denied that was the case, saying that a facility management business case was being developed which was an ‘urgent piece of work in progress’.
He said that it was ‘not ideal, but it is due to the time frame we are working on’, adding that including such costs in the business case would have caused ‘significant delays’ to the project. He admitted that it was ‘important information for States Members’, who are due to vote on the £804.5 million budget for the Our Hospital project on 5 October.
Deputy Gardiner said there had been ‘promises’ that ongoing revenue costs, in connection with facility management, would be presented to politicians in time for the vote.
Panel chair Senator Kristina Moore said the proposition requested a ‘considerable’ amount of borrowing ‘without knowing the ongoing revenue costs’.
She questioned whether Senator Farnham believed bringing the proposition to the Assembly without being able to tell Members ‘what the burden of cost will be’ was acceptable.
Senator Farnham replied that it was acceptable, that they knew the ‘ballpark figure’ and that they would not exceed this and would be making savings.
‘We will deliver it as soon as possible,’ he said, of the facility management business case.
Gretta Starks, project manager for the Our Hospital scheme, said there were two areas to facility management.
She said: ‘One is what is the lifecycle of the building? What is the cost of replacing the bits within the building? And there has been progress on that during the outline business case.
‘The other element of the FM [facility management] costs are the costs associated with actually looking after the building. The cost of the porters, the people who do the cleaning.’
The life cycle of the hospital had been included in the outline business case, she said, but the latter was ongoing within the government.
Senator Farnham was asked by Senator Moore whether the £804.5 million budget was appropriate.
He said it was ‘of course a lot of money, but it’s a very large project that we are delivering’.
The minister said they hoped to complete the project ‘without utilising all of the budget’.
Senator Farnham said: ‘There were pressures and options to go even further, if you look around the world the way medical science is evolving there are some extremely interesting opportunities but also some extremely expensive opportunities.
‘We don’t want to build an average hospital,’ he said, adding that they wanted a hospital that was ‘right for Jersey’.
