New hospital: Les Quennevais 'move budget' up £5m since Jan

Tuesday 04 May 2021

The estimated budget for moving some health services to the former Les Quennevais School, while Overdale is turned into the island's new main hospital, has gone up 50% to £15m - with a warning it may still go higher.

When the move was announced in January, Senator Lyndon Farnham, who heads up the new hospital project, estimated that the necessary budget would be around £10m.

But now in an answer to questioning from Senator Sarah Ferguson, officials have revealed the new figure of £15m, and said that it may go higher still as the project progresses. 

Officially referred to as a 'decant,' the States Assembly approved Overdale as the site for the new hospital on 17 November 2020.

The Minister for Health, Richard Renouf, says that in order to redevelop Overdale, "It was then necessary to relocate the clinical and non-clinical services that currently occupy the site. Work was undertaken to gain an understanding of those services and their needs and an options appraisal was undertaken to identify a suitable relocation site. The former Les Quennevais School site was the only option which was large enough to accommodate the clinical departments and available within the required timeframe."

Pictured: the budget to move services to Les Quennevais now stands at around £15m, up from £10m when it was announced by Senator Farnham in January. 

He goes on to say that they have now identified which Overdale services won't be moving to Les Quennevais, and lists them as:

• the Horticultural Therapies Group – a relocation site remains under negotiation and will be confirmed in the near future.
• Hard and soft facilities management services, except where those services are required in support of services in the decant facility – these will be co-located with other HCS estates management services.
• The Pharmacy stores – these will co-locate with other HCS stores for efficiency purposes.
• The Assisted Reproduction Unit – will return to the General Hospital at Gloucester Street where it was originally located prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
• The Health and Safety Training Room – this will relocate to a part of Orchard House not used or necessary for the delivery of mental health services.

Finally, Deputy Renouf confirms the budget for moving services to Les Quennevais: "An estimated investment of up to £15million is required based on the schedule of accommodation developed in the Supplementary Functional Brief. Further cost certainty will be gained as detailed plans progress."

When asked by Express why the cost had already gone up, apparently by around £5m, a spokesperson for the Design and Delivery Partner said:

"The precise cost of the decant of the health services from Overdale to the former Les Quennevais School will not be known until the design for Les Quennevais is complete. This work is now underway to establish exactly what work is required in order to be able to relocate services following the publication of the supplementary functional brief earlier this month.

"To date, the budget for the move has been estimated to be up to £15m, based on the schedule of accommodation developed in the supplementary functional brief. Further certainly of programme, budget and timetable will be gained as detailed plans progress."

Pictured: the former Les Quennevais School.

When the move was announced in January, Senator Farnham as the Chairman of the Our Hospital Political Oversight Group, set out the likely costs: "The exact cost is still to be determined, but is estimated to be around £10m. The cost of decanting Overdale is included in the £550m build cost for the new hospital, and formed part of the Design and Delivery Partner’s contract bid."

The government explained the reasoning behind choosing the former Les Quennevais School, as the most suitable place for the Overdale services, due to it being: 

• big enough to house all patient-facing services, with ample parking;
• well-served by public transport;
• already in Government ownership.

It added that the planned proposal will see internal refit and upgrade work at the former school starting this summer, with the building opening in January 2021.

The facilities will then be moved back to the new hospital when it opens, leaving the former school site available for future development.

Ashok Handa, the Clinical Director for the 'Our Hospital' project, said: “The services from Overdale that are moving are ambulatory and outpatient type of services but of course access, in particular some of the services look after patients who may have multiple needs or multiple co-morbidities, so a recurring question was about accessibility and we can assure with this site that all patient facing services are all located on the ground floor.”

The services moving to Les Quennevais are: 

• Child Development Treatment Centre
• Physiotherapy 
• Occupational Therapy
• Speech and Language Therapy
• Dietetics 
• Psychology
• Older people’s mental health
• Pain Clinic
• Pre-operative assessment
• Outpatient departments of neurology, rheumatology and urology 
• Podiatry
• The audiology department currently at Overdale, including the hearing support centre