By Lindsay Ash
“WHY are you talking about the bloody hospital? We are all fed up with it.” I understand the sentiment and agree with it but I also think it’s VITAL that the Jersey taxpayer is given the facts as to where their money has gone and, more importantly, will continue to go over the next 50 years. If you are going to read ONE article on the saga then I suggest that this is it.
In the early part of the last decade Jersey took the decision that a new hospital was much needed and so began a saga that has dragged on, is drawing to a conclusion and will leave a stain on Jersey politics for years to come.
Let’s put this into a context: around the time the decision was taken to build a new hospital, JT were tasked with installing fibre across the entire Island. This was an enormous task but, by 2018, it was completed, and we were up there as world leaders with our connectivity speeds. And yet, we are now in 2025 and still a brick has not been laid in building a new hospital. Why?
Firstly, JT had an excellent team and board of directors who focused on the job in hand and quite rightly blocked out any noise from a small number of lunatics around them who objected to what they were doing. Whereas the hospital in the initial stages (2012-2018) by and large had weak politicians involved who not only listened to the lunatics but allowed them to take over the asylum.
They were frightened by a handful of people not wishing to build on People’s Park and, so as not to appear unpopular, surrendered. It would be nice to know who those politicians were wouldn’t it? They have cost the Island probably well over a £1bn. Sadly, the Council of Ministers at the time, feeling that they were going to lose in the Assembly, pulled the vote so we can only surmise as to who the culprits were.
I don’t want to dwell though on weak people not wishing to be unpopular and lacking the bottle to take a tough decision that was much needed. No, I want to focus on more recent stages where people did take the big steps but were thwarted by deliberate acts of self-interest and arrogance that border on industrial sabotage.
It’s easy for me to talk about the 2018 to 2022 period as I was involved as the Treasury representative for the “Our Hospital” project. Firstly, we came about because the compromise “Gloucester Street plan” had failed to achieve planning permission not once but twice and it was felt by the Assembly that it was better shelved. This was all very well, but what next?
At an early stage we outlined several risks. Three of the main ones were:
1) Political interference (I even named specific names at the time) with their own agendas. Sadly, despite our best efforts this was to become reality.
2) Failure to get planning permission. After all, this had gone on since 2012 without obtaining any. We did, however, achieve planning permission in 2022.
3) We could not be swayed by criticism of the location as it was going to be unpopular with some wherever we put it.
One thing we all desired to do was to make sure this was the most thorough process ever conducted into the hospital – and to my mind it was. Every conceivable site was considered (some we never knew existed!). Medical consultants were consulted, construction experts were brought in… because someone’s done a bit of painting and decorating doesn’t make them experts on hospital construction, although some in the Island think it does. We had the professor of cardiology from Oxford University. We had planners who worked on the London Olympic stadium, we had cost experts as well. There were no corners cut; this had to be right. However, we were determined to keep within the £800m envelope and, on one occasion, the current Chief Minister let the team know in no uncertain terms it wasn’t going over that… in the light of a damning report saying that the current effort is in stark contrast to the Our Hospital one in terms of financial management I do wonder what he makes of all this in his heart of hearts?
Having found a site, you then need someone to build it and there weren’t many looking to do it – projects having failed previously – but there was one who stood out having built hospitals all over the world. There were NO bidders from France, where previously a bunch of self-appointed hospital experts (think Martin Bryce, Hyacinth Bouquet and Timmy Mallett) build it for way less. The nearest we could find was a firm of architects who said they’d design it for that price! “Experts” also publicly declared that a hospital in Oxford was being built for half the price. This worried Deputy Rowland Huelin and myself, as, if they were correct, then something was seriously wrong with our planning and I told the team this… They were correct, except that the Oxford one was half the size and not a General Hospital, so in effect ours was cheaper and we wrote a joint letter to the JEP telling them so. This was the type of ill-informed rubbish we were having to deal with, eagerly gobbled up by politicians opposed to the scheme and the online media. Throw in Covid and this was a tough gig. We were getting there but the planning had been held up by – yes, you guessed it – political interference over the access road. This had an adverse effect on financing the project.
The plan to finance the project was to borrow against the strategic reserve fund or, as it’s known, “the rainy day fund” which, over the previous 20 years, had averaged a 6% return per annum. We had the chance to borrow at under 2% (around 1.8%) over 40 years (as the IOM, in fact, did). Our plan was to borrow for pension funding and the hospital together. Unfortunately, the delays caused by various States Members meant that we couldn’t do that and by the time we decided we could wait no longer and to merely borrow for the pensions the rate had risen to 2.5%. It was frustrating, but still meant we would save over £3.5bn over the next 60 years. Someone said: “That’s easy with hindsight” – but it wasn’t hindsight, we were all set to do it but were thwarted by the dreaded “political interference”.
Planning permission arrived in May 2022, too late to approach the markets with an election coming and the “purdah” time which means basically the government can’t do much, and certainly not borrow £500m .
But all was set fair for the next government. The hard yards had been done. The Site, the Plans, the Constructor AND Planning permission. Or, so you would have thought.
Lindsay Ash was Deputy for St Clement between 2018 and 2022, serving as Assistant Treasury and Home Affairs Minister under Chief Minister John Le Fondré. He worked in the City of London for 15 years as a futures broker before moving to Jersey and working in the Island’s finance industry from 2000. @Getonthelash2
