New hospital selection process was flawed, report claims

Friday 13 November 2020

The selection process for the new Hospital site did not follow best practice and was "subjective rather than objective", a new report has said.

In addition, the ‘Future Hospital' Scrutiny Panel says "key documents" are still missing ahead of the States Assembly debate on whether to approve Overdale as the final site on Tuesday 17 November.

In their report, the Panel concluded that the site selection process didn't followed the HM Treasury Green Book - a key document setting out how governments should approach large-scale public investments.

“Our detailed review has found the site selection process to be procedurally flawed in areas, such as a lack of recommended SMART targets and the use of sequential criteria which was applied without weighting," Senator Kristina Moore, the Panel's Chair, said.

"For this reason, we have concluded that the site selection process was subjective rather than objective and did not follow good practice.  At the second stage of the site selection, where 55 sites were deselected, it is not clear why 9 of the 55 sites that met the criteria were not pursued."

Pictured: The Panel said "key documents" are still missing ahead of the States Assembly debate on Tuesday 17 November.

The Panel also noted the Strategic Outline Case, which will cover project scope, service need, affordability of options and deliverability, still hasn't been published. 

"I firmly believe that we need the finalised version of this information before the debate in order to make an informed decision on the site of the new hospital," Senator Moore said.

The Panel’s review also highlights that if the Jersey Care Model - which includes moving care services that don’t need to be provided in hospital into the community - isn’t implemented, the proposed allowance of 15% additional space for future expansion when compared to population growth of 1% per year may cause the hospital to come under pressure within 12 years. 

There is also no guarantee the hospital can be delivered within the proposed budget and the Outline Business Case has yet to be published.

It was confirmed in a 202-page report that the cost of the project could reach up to £800m - £550m of building costs, and £254.5m of ‘additional costs’.

Those costs include acquiring extra sites (£25.3m), relocating services currently operating at Overdale (£5m), demolishing the current hospital (£7m), and a contingency fund (£174.3m) to account for any unforeseen issues that may arise.

"We have also received information from Government which demonstrates that it will be challenging to build the hospital within the proposed budget of £550 million," Senator Moore said.

"Furthermore, there are non-site specific costs of £254 million which bring the total cost of the hospital to approximately £800 million. Based on the information presented so far, it is unclear whether this represents good value for money for islanders."