Progress Party to push for new hospital on current site

Thursday 16 September 2021

One of Jersey’s new political parties has announced that it will not support the building of a new hospital at Overdale - and that it will be pushing to return to original plans to build on the current site.

The Progress Party – led by Senator Steve Pallett and with Deputy Steve Luce as Secretary and Party Whip – has published a set of new policies on its website, which includes overturning the States Assembly's decision to build a £804m general hospital on Westmount Road.

The party, which launched in January, has been developing its policies since then but did share some policies on housing in June.

Now, it has shared more, stating: “The Progress Party does not and will not support the Overdale Hospital project.

“If The Progress Party returns enough successful candidates in the 2022 General Election to be a party with power, and even if the Planning Department has granted Planning and Building permissions, we will overturn the decision to build the General Hospital at Overdale. 

“We will refurbish and/or build (where necessary) a new General Hospital at the existing site.”

Pictured: An image of the 2018 hospital plan that the Progress Party wants to return to.

The party says it will achieve this by adopting the revised scheme based on that published on 12 March 2018 to refurbish the General Hospital on its existing footprint and, where necessary, build on land in the immediate vicinity.

This was the preference of the Council of Ministers of the time, which included the Deputy Luce as Environment Minister and party treasurer Eddie Noel, who was then Transport Minister.

However, that year Deputy Luce refused permission to build a new hospital on Gloucester Street following advice from an independent planning inspector.

The inspector concluded that the proposed £466m design had been “led by clinicians and not by designers” and it was “grossly out of scale of the immediate surroundings”.

However, the report did conclude, that the proposed site of the current General Hospital, which had been approved by the States Assembly, was appropriate.

Pictured: Deputy Steve Luce, the then-Environment Minister, and Andy Scate, the Infrastructure Department's Chief Officer, shortly after the rejection had been announced in 2018.

That approval was overturned in 2019 when the Assembly voted to rescind the earlier decision after another planning application was rejected, this time by current Environment Minister John Young.

Senator John Le Fondré’s successful bid to be Chief Minister in 2018 had been based on starting a new site-selection process for a new hospital.

Reform Jersey’s manifesto for the election that year says it “generally supports building the new hospital on a site in town, where transport links are best and where little disruption can be caused. 

“Some outpatient services can be provided at an expanded Overdale site; however, emergency and general services must be located on one site with optimal clinical adjacency to enable swift transfers between A&E and wards with minimal risk to the patient.”

All Reform Members in the Assembly supported the selection of Overdale as the preferred site last October.

Although describing itself as a movement rather than a party, the Jersey Liberal Conservatives is likely to be critical of Overdale as the preferred site for the hospital.

Its Chair, former External Relations Minister Sir Philip Bailhache, told a public meeting organised by the Friends of Our New Hospital group in July that the site selection arrangements were “a cynical and indefensible travesty of democratic process” adding that was “disappointing that the States succumbed to the Government’s insistence and agreed to approve the site at Overdale.”

One party that is sure to support the Overdale project is the newly-formed Jersey Alliance Party, which counts the current Chief, Home Affairs and Education Ministers among its number.

In a recent blog on the party’s website, Membership Secretary Deputy Lindsay Ash defended the Overdale decision and said it was “time to draw a line under the wasted expenditure of the previous years”.