DELAYS to the new hospital would impact staff recruitment and patient safety, health officials said on the opening day of a public planning inquiry into the proposal to build at Overdale.
The inquiry is being led by UK-based planning inspector Philip Staddon, who called the application ‘enormous’, with over 100 public representations, and hundreds of pages of documents in total.
Following the five-day inquiry, Mr Staddon will compile a report advising whether the project should go ahead, with the ultimate decision resting with Environment Minister John Young.
Plans for a new hospital – the Island’s biggest ever capital project – have suffered a number of setbacks and earlier proposals for a new facility on the existing Gloucester Street site were twice rejected by consecutive Environment Ministers.
Those rejections led to a fresh site selection process with Overdale being chosen as the preferred location. However, this has also proved controversial with a number of nearby residents opposing the development.
They have cited concerns over traffic, the planned expansion of Westmount Road, the size and scale of the hospital and the £800 million price tag.
Outlining support for the Overdale application, chief nurse Rose Naylor called the current health estate ‘very old’, with some parts dating back to the 1700s and the newest section of the Hospital on Gloucester Street ‘now over 60 years old’.
‘The risk of building failure increases each year,’ she said, which posed a ‘significant risk for Jersey and for Islanders’.
‘Our current site continues to fail on a daily basis,’ said Ms Naylor.
Responding to queries on whether the current hospital could be renovated, Ms Naylor said: ‘The space in that site is simply not big enough to meet modern healthcare standards.’
Asked by Mr Staddon whether things were ‘now at such a state where patients are at risk?’, Ms Naylor said: ‘Anything that happens to the infrastructure and building will ultimately impact on patient care.’
Professor Enda McVeigh, a consultant infertility specialist, told the hearing: ‘Putting it simply: the longer you delay in having that facility, the more people will die or have an adverse outcome.’
Dr Adrian Noon raised concerns about the impact of the current infrastructure on recruitment of health staff.
He said he had shown two young consultants around the Hospital who were looking to potentially move to Jersey, who ‘couldn’t believe the facilities that we’ve got’, but when he highlighted the proposed new hospital they said it was ‘the most amazing thing and would make it a place for them to come and live’.
Deputy Chief Minister Lyndon Farnham, the politician with responsibility for the Our Hospital project, said there was an ‘urgent need for a new hospital’.
‘The vast majority of Islanders simply want us to get on with it,’ said Senator Farnham.
In his opening statement, the minister said the project team had received States approval on the location, on the access road at Westmount, on the budget and on funding models.
Senator Farnham said from the outset they had been ‘realistic’ that any location would have proved ‘controversial’.
‘There is simply no perfect or uncontentious site, especially not in an Island measured nine by five,’ he said.
Professor Ashok Handa, medical director of the Our Hospital project, later echoed this, and argued: ‘This is as good as it gets.’
