THE Island’s health watchdog will have to rely on inspectors from the UK to review hospital services if proposed changes to care regulation laws are approved later this year.

Amendments to the Regulation of Care (Jersey) Law 2014, due to be debated later this year, would expand the Jersey Care Commission’s remit to include the General Hospital, the ambulance service and government-provided mental health services.

The move comes after years of calls for independent inspection of the hospital, including a public petition launched in 2022, which gathered more than 1,000 signatures.

However, Health Minister Tom Binet told a panel of politicians tasked with scrutinising the changes that the Commission – which already regulates care homes and other social care providers – would not have the resources to create a dedicated inspection team for hospital services if its remit were extended.

Deputy Binet said: “We’ve got the JCC, which will be using people from the UK, because we can’t afford to have a permanent team of people ready to inspect hospital services. So they’ll be utilising specialists from the UK to come and undertake work.”

Ahead of the debate, the British Medical Association warned that widening the watchdog’s remit could add pressure to already stretched services, while the Commission itself has raised concerns about its own financial future should its remit be expanded.

The regulator’s latest annual report said that its long-term financial sustainability “remains challenging” amid the government’s continued drive to make savings – and warned that insufficient funding could affect its ability to deliver “key initiatives”.

Elsewhere, in the hearing, Deputy Binet said he had asked the Commission to ensure that any new inspection regime was introduced in a way that avoided unnecessary disruption.

“I’ve requested that [the implementation] is done as sensitively as possible… rather than something that comes in and causes a mess. [The JCC chair] seems to be very agreeable, and is going to make certain it’s carried out in an orderly way,” he said.

Senior officers told the panel that the main challenges would be achieving engagement across the entire department while also improving digital integration between systems.

Associate director of quality and safety Pam Le Sueur said: “Making sure that we’ve got engagement from everybody from the bottom up is really, really important, and that’s probably going to be a big challenge – communication.”

She added: “We know that we’re still going to have, potentially, 12 months before the first inspection… We’re not ready right now, but we are a good way through getting ready.”

The hearing also discussed how large services would be registered and overseen.

Officials said they favoured a small number of senior registered managers – such as the chief nurse, mental health director and head of the ambulance service – rather than registering each ward separately.

Ms Le Sueur said: “Overall, what we would want would be to have around three people. We wouldn’t want it devolved down to ward level and have every ward working in a silo.”