Nightingale equipment could be used in Les Quennevais hospital

Monday 21 June 2021

Equipment from the decommissioned Nightingale Hospital could be used in the temporary hospital at Les Quennevais in order to keep costs down.

The project team behind building the new Hospital, which will involve services currently at Overdale moving to the former school while the £804m Westmount campus is built, said it was doing all it can to ensure that the ‘decant’ stayed within its £15m budget.

This figure has already risen by £5m after the detailed design of the temporary hospital was finalised.

Speaking to Scrutiny recently, project director Richard Bannister said the total budget for the Les Quennevais part of the project was capped at £15m but would hopefully cost less.

“We are looking wherever we can to make savings,” he said. “And we are trying to explore to see whether we can use equipment from decommissioned parts of the Nightingale and other areas to create those savings.” 

A planning application for change of use from education to health is on course to be submitted next month, although the overall project timeline has slipped, with services not expected to be up and running at Les Quennevais until Autumn 2022.

Originally, it was envisaged that the temporary hospital would open early next year.

Mr Bannister said: “In terms of timetable slippage, it comes down to establishing the practicalities of moving all those services from where they are now to where we’re proposing to put them.

Pictured: Most - but not all - services that are 'decanting' from Overdale to the old Les Quennevais School will be returning to the new hospital in 2026.

“There was also some time lost while we were trying to identify solutions for the decant from Overdale. It turns out there was only one credible option, which was Les Quennevais.”

The majority of services currently at Overdale, including physiotherapy and speech and language therapy, will return to the site when the new hospital opens in 2026, however not all will.

These include the Child Development and Therapy Centre and Older Mental Health and Psychology Outpatient Services because the clinicians leading these departments do not want to be part of a hospital campus that is primarily focused on acute and inpatient services. 

Professor Ashok Handa, Clinical Director of the Our Hospital project, told the Future Hospital Scrutiny Panel: “Alternative suitable provision will need to be made for these services. 

“However, certainly for those focusing on mental health, a significant proportion of the outpatient services will be provided in a more dispersed way in the community rather than in hospital.”

Giving an update on the move to Les Quennevais, Professor Handa said that the location and size of all clinical-facing areas, which will be on the ground floor of the former school, had been agreed by all individual departmental leads, staff and the Health and Community Services executive team. 

This week, all non-patient-facing spaces would be finalised. 

The delayed ‘Outline Business Case’ - a document which sets out how the new hospital will be paid for - is due to be lodged next month with Scrutiny being given the opportunity to see it beforehand. The States Assembly will be expected to vote on it in September.