UNCERTAINTY over the cost of the Island’s new health facilities is likely to continue in the near future, according to the Infrastructure Minister.
But Deputy Tom Binet said he wanted to be ‘transparent’ and would include what he described as ‘an advisory’ within the Government Plan – set to be debated in December – to inform States Members of the likely total cost of the new acute hospital at Overdale.
Declining to give details of those costs ahead of the plan’s publication, the minister acknowledged ‘a long pressurised debate’ in the last week within the Council of Ministers over how to approach the issue of securing funding from the States Assembly.
The timetable is complicated by the fact that the project’s business case will not be available until after publication of the Government Plan.
‘I had said that I wanted to be transparent about the figures and that’s still the intention,’ said Deputy Binet.
‘What we are going to be doing is asking for a sum of money to take us to a point in time next summer where we can present the whole thing more comprehensively. But what I’ve insisted upon is that we produce a schedule that will sit in the government plan as an advisory to tell people what to expect – give or take – and that’s the approach we are going to take. That should be available very shortly.’
The schedule, which will cover the period 2024 to 2027, is intended to ‘give clarity on’ and ‘certainty about’ the new Overdale development that offers acute facilities alongside the outpatients’ departments that will remain at Gloucester Street.
‘That’s the piece that’s most urgent and the piece that we can afford to have no compromise on at all… and there will be a certain sum of money to progress with the other two sites,’ the minister said.
Appearing at the latest Environment, Housing and Infrastructure Scrutiny Panel meeting, Deputy Binet was again asked for the likely total cost of the new healthcare facilities in the multi-site approach which has replaced the Our Hospital project at Overdale.
He acknowledged that he was not in a position to give such detail, and he also alluded to concerns about the possibility of ‘adjustments’ in the later phases of the project, although he gave no details to the Panel.
Deputy Binet said: ‘What we don’t want to do is to give away all our information to our contractors, so the figures for each year will be available, but there won’t be a breakdown between what money is going to what sites, save for the fact that people will know that the bulk of the emphasis is bound to be on the acute facility.
‘Going forward, there may be some estimated figures going beyond that but I think that the financial times we live in are so uncertain that this might all be subject to some adjustment beyond that period.
‘What we have ascertained is that if we are putting four years’ numbers in, that we’re certain that those four years can be funded in the here and now.
‘What we are doing is spelling out where we are going and we are doing, with the ability to back that up. In the current climate that’s as much as we can do for the time being. It won’t be to the penny but it will be the information that we have available,’ Deputy Binet added.
