THE HEALTH Minister is calling for a review of the way the new Hospital build contract was signed to learn lessons from a process that was only completed “by the narrowest of margins”.
Senator Tom Binet – who this week was re-elected to a role he has held since 2024 – signed a contract with the UK arm of French construction giant Bouygues which moved to firm’s status from ‘preferred tenderer’ to ‘main works deliver partner’.
It means that work on the £710m project to build an acute in-patient hospital on the now-cleared site at Overdale can begin, with the facility due to open in 2028.
The contract was signed on Friday 5 July, just two days before the election, which allowed then-Deputy Binet to keep his promise to get the contract over the line in the last political term.
It was, however, right down to the wire.
Senator Binet has flatly denied that the 11th hour signing was in any way engineered to win him votes; rather, it was important that the contractor had the certainty of a contract going into an inherently uncertain election and post-election period.
However, despite months of detailed negotiations between Bouygues UK and the government’s new hospital team, Senator Binet said that the deal came perilously close to being delayed and possibly derailed – not by the contractor but by government process.
Speaking about the project in his first formal interview since being returned to the Assembly, Senator Binet said: “Getting the contract signed within the last government ended up being, in my view, extraordinarily complicated in the final week to ten days beforehand.
“We managed to do it but I will be calling for a lessons-learned process to make sure that, on major capital projects, we can be a little bit more streamlined going forward.
“Everybody came good in the end but there are definitely lessons to be learned because this could have easily extended the 12 or 14 years that we have taken to get to this point.
“That could have been lengthened and made even worse. Fortunately, it wasn’t – but it was by the narrowest of margins, and that must not be allowed to happen again.”
Although Senator Binet stressed that he was unable to go into the details of the last-minute hurdles, the JEP understands that late due-diligence concerns may have been raised and an emergency Council of Ministers meeting was called in the final hours of the last administration, just a few days before Jersey went to the polls.
The Health Minister said that, despite the spanner thrown into the works by his own side, he was certain that Bouygues UK was the right partner for the job and the deal was sound.
He said: “UK health authorities who have used them are not only happy with their work but have also continued to work with them and given them other jobs, which is a very good recommendation.
“We’ve also spoken to people using Bouygues-built facilities and they seem very happy. When you look at our appalling history over building a new hospital, I think it was fortunate that we were able to attract two credible bidders and select such a reputable contractor.
“If we would have stumbled again, I doubt any business would have wanted to get involved with this project.”
With a contract now signed, the government has said that “ongoing assurance” will taking place in the coming weeks before further announcements are made.
However, in his nomination speech for Health Minister this week, Senator Binet said he wanted to incorporate one or two specialty units at the new hospital in order to attract non-resident patients to Jersey.
“Cancer could be one specialty,” he later told the JEP. “I don’t want Health to be a drain on public finances but a partial contributor. People will fly down from Scotland to London to get specialist treatment and, with our new hospital, we have an opportunity to attract people here.”
