THE Jersey Bowling Club has been given ‘99% certainty’ that they will not be moving from their current home on Westmount Road.
Deputy Tom Binet, who is the political head of the ‘New Healthcare Facilities Programme’ – the name of the government’s multi-site-hospitals plan – said that it was very likely that the club would be staying halfway up the hill.
The 110-year-old club was destined to move from its historic green in order for the road to be straightened, flattened and widened as part of the past government’s Our Hospital Project.
The previous administration had gone as far as applying for planning permission to create a new home for the Jersey Bowling Club at Warwick Farm.
Deputy Binet also told a Scrutiny panel hearing on Friday that it would be unlikely that all the properties and land east of Westmount Road would be needed for whatever is built at Overdale.
This includes 13 of the 14 properties bought by the last government for the Our Hospital ‘health campus’ and two agricultural fields.
However, the Infrastructure Minister added that nothing would be 100% certain until a ‘functional brief’ was published at the end of May.
Appearing before the Future Hospital Review Panel, Health Minister Karen Wilson said that she wished to eventually see mental-health services co-located with physical services at one of the two main hospital sites – Overdale and Kensington Place/Gloucester Street.
However, she added that the £9m refurbishment of Clinique Pinel, which is due to open at the end of June, would make it an important and capable centre until that time.
The panel also heard that Deputy Binet had just commissioned a £40,000 review of the condition of current facilities at the General Hospital, to be carried out by Health’s head of estates, Jon Carter.
The Deputy added that he was committed to funding the maintenance of existing facilities ‘for as long as it takes’.
