States Members meet today on the first day of a sitting in which the proposed new facility at Overdale and its £804.5 million budget are to be debated and voted on, with a Scrutiny amendment seeking to cap the cost at £550 million.
Protesters are due to gather in the Royal Square for a rally against the spending plans – the second demonstration in four days. On Saturday, around 100 Islanders turned out with placards in torrid weather conditions at the People’s Park.
Ahead of the crucial vote, a group of Health and Community Services nurses have written an open letter – published in today’s JEP – calling for politicians to approve the plans ‘without any further delay’. Providing the best possible care for Islanders is becoming an ‘increasing challenge’ within the constraints of the current General Hospital, the nurses say.
Last month, more than 40 consultants and senior clinicians came together to urge Members to back plans for a new facility at Overdale, describing it as ‘the only immediately deliverable option’ for the project. But another letter from a group of retired nurses, the Jersey Hospitals Nurses League – which was read out at Saturday’s protest – said their ‘greatest concern’ was the ‘enormous cost that has been proposed by our government’.
Ministers hope that their proposals will get the backing of the States, which would see borrowing of more than £750 million for the £800 million project approved. However, an amendment from the Future Hospital Review Panel is seeking to reduce the maximum expenditure for the completed Our Hospital project to £550 million and limit government borrowing plans, saying they should be capped at £400 million.
Senator Kristina Moore, who chairs the panel, has said a reduction in borrowing is ‘sensible’ and that the scale of the project is not justified. In a report published on Friday, the panel said there was limited information on future running costs and facilities management, which they argued undermined the credibility of the budget.
Deputy Chief Minister Lyndon Farnham, who has political responsibility for the Our Hospital project, said the budget was appropriate for the ‘very large project’, when he appeared recently at the last Scrutiny hearing regarding the hospital before this week’s vote. He added that ministers hoped the project could be completed ‘without utilising all of the budget’.
‘We don’t want to build an average hospital,’ he said, adding that they wanted a hospital that was ‘right for Jersey’.
Professor Ashok Handa, the project’s medical director, has warned that parts of the General Hospital could no longer be fit for use by 2027, so agreeing the funding to enable the hospital to be completed by 2026 was crucial.
Speaking to the JEP last weekend, Professor Handa said he was ‘not holding a gun to the head’ of decision-makers, but that the Overdale project was ‘the right thing for the people of Jersey’.
