A Non-Profit Organisation NPO1277 Email: Friends@ournewhospital.org.je

Submission to The Future Hospital Review Scrutiny Panel

Terms of Reference Two ("TOR 2") - To Assess the Methodology

and the Set Criteria used Throughout the Site Selection Process and its Suitability 3rd October 2020

Introduction  

The ethos of the site selection process was set by the Chief Minster's Our Hospital' document of 3rd May 2019[1], specifically in the opening paragraph of the Communications and Engagement section:

"An integral part of my commitment to progressing the development of a new hospital, as I made clear in my comment to P5/2019, is the need to broaden the engagement and communication with clinical and non-clinical staff; stakeholders; partners involved in delivering the health economy in Jersey; politicians; and Islanders. This combined with an agreed public interest' test, will be essential to get as wide a buy-in to the new hospital as possible. As part of this wider engagement, we need to consider and discuss not just where our hospital should be, but what it should include, and how best to deliver it as part of a wider health care system capable of serving the Island for the next 30 to 50 years."

From this statement came the concept and reality of the Citizens' Panel, formed from islanders across society and, at the time, hopefully, across the island's demographic population, although getting young people under the age of 30 proved to be problematic. In his statement of 3rd May 2019, the Chief Minister spoke of a number of citizens panels being formed. In the event only this one panel was formed. It was sworn to secrecy and its work only became apparent with the publication of the Our Hospital Site Selection Paper on 17th July 2020.

The Citizens' Panel[2]  

The  Citizens'  Panel's  Terms of  Reference[3]  are  at Annex  A  and  the  genesis  of  the  secrecy  that surrounded its membership, organisation and meetings is in the final paragraph of the Panel's TOR:

"Panel discussions will remain confidential and should not be discussed outside the meetings with the media or the public."

Submissions of Evidence  

Within the TOR was this requirement:

"Interested parties will be invited to submit evidence to the Citizens' Panel on the factors listed within the scope section of this document. Invitations for submissions will be made public – and circulated to those who unsuccessfully applied to become a Citizens' Panel members – upon the closure of the appeal for Panel members."

It is unclear whether or not there was any attempt by the Our Hospital Project Team to fulfil it.[4].

The Work of the Citizens Panel  

As it started its work the Citizens' Panel was required to consider (its Scope'[5]) the following:

• The need for a new hospital – based on the evidence of the limitations and deterioration of the current hospital and the anticipated increases in healthcare demand

• How a new hospital meets the needs of patients and wider users of healthcare – such as where certain types of care should be based (in a hospital or in the community), accessibility (such as by walking, cycling, bus and car) and reliability of access (such as provision of out-of-hours and emergency services)

• The factors determining the hospital's socio-economic impacts – such as cost and funding

• The impact on sustainability – such as natural environment, loss of green space, use of natural and non-renewable resources

• The local community impacts – such as changes to roads, traffic congestion, purchase of land and property, and loss of housing

• The impacts in terms of design, historic environment, townscape, landscape and visual impacts

The facilitator for the Citizens' Panel was from the UK and remains anonymous. It is clear from the information published regarding the Panel's review that they were precluded from visiting any potential sites for the OH Project. In addition, they failed to cover these factors:

• Is the site in Government ownership?

• Is the site in a pollution free area with clean air? (This is a key NHS requirement)

• Does the site meet the requirements of the Island Plan?

• Is the site in the Hospital Zone' of the Island Plan?

The Citizens' Panel met on four occasions. The result of their consideration was a set of 23 criteria which they recommended should be considered in the process of selecting a site for the OH Project. The criteria are listed in Annex B. It is important to note that the Citizens' Panel did not consider any actual sites for the OH Project.

The Selection Panel

There was and is no connection between the Citizens' Panel and the panel that eventually came up with the list of five sites published on the OH project paper of the States website on Friday 17th July 2020. The selection panel was made up of five civil servants, all recruited from the UK, two of whom have been in Jersey for less than two years and two of whom are on temporary contracts:

• Director General, Health and Community Services (Caroline Landon)

• Clinical Director, Our Hospital project (Professor Ashok Handa)

• Our Hospital Interim Project Director (Richard Bannister)

• Chief of Staff (Catherine Maddon)

• Director of Natural Environment (Willie Peggie)

It is submitted, therefore, that their local knowledge was limited and again there is no evidence that this panel visited the shortlisted sites, let alone the Government owned sites. Instead, essentially spurious reasons were used to exclude Warwick Farm and St Saviour's Hospital, as this Group pointed out in its Bulletin 2 sent to its Friends of Our Hospital, at Annex C.

There is no evidence in the OH Shortlisting Report that this panel reviewed the WS Atkins Report of 2013[6] or the Gleeds Report[7] that identified all the potential sites in Jersey, as a part of the Future Hospital project. Had the panel done so, as a paper exercise, and compared that reports findings with the list produced through the formation of the Citizens' Panel it would have saved both time and money. It would also have noted how high the reports scored the States owned sites of Overdale, Warwick Farm and St Saviour's Hospital, compared to the assessment they published at Appendix 4 of the Shortlisting Report[8].

Conclusion

The intention of the Chief Minister was to remove any of the direct political interference that had compromised the Future Hospital Project by leaving it to the political Oversight Group (POG) to act as a reporting source, having been briefed by Civil Servants. The result was a site shortlist that made no real sense to the public, let alone to most States members and resulted in the political and public actions sending protesting reports and propositions to the States, specifically, leading to the formation of the Scrutiny Panel Review of the Future Hospital Site on 31st August 2020[9], followed reports and propositions from the Connétable s of St Helier, St Saviour and St Lawrence for the removal of St Andrew's Park, Five Oaks and Millbrook Park, respectively and the Connétable of St Helier calling for the States to respect their rescindment motion P05/2019 not to build the new hospital on Peoples Park. These political acts led directly to an announcement from the POG on Friday 4th September 2020 that three of the five shortlisted sites were to be removed from the shortlist, leaving Peoples Park and Overdale.

The whole site shortlisting process appears to have been predicated on placing the Our Hospital (OH) on the People's Park, having been compared financially against the self-evident additional cost of developing the OH on the Overdale site. The objective of the POG seems to be to have the States Assembly to consider and approve People's Park as the sole choice of site.

This is fundamentally undemocratic, with States members being fed tiny pieces of information before being asked to make a huge decision on the location and funding of the OH project. What should now happen is what is set out in the background document that accompanies this paper, that is for RoK/FCC to assess the three sites in States ownership plus People's Park and deliver to the States the assessed cost of these four sites, recognising that People's Park belongs to the people in the Parish of St Helier, it is a compromised site, as recognised in the Our Hospital Kits of Parts[10], it does not have enough space for on-site car parking and does not deliver the full original requirements of the Our Hospital project.

Only by doing this will due process and democracy be restored.

Annex A 11th November 2019

Annex B

Site Selection Criteria as Agreed by Our Hospital Citizens' Panel 17 July 2020

1. Is the site large enough to accommodate all the required clinical and support services, including staff and service (access) facilities?
2. Does the site provide the ability for expansion? Will the site be able to deliver the hospital in the project timeline?
3. Does the highway network, locally and strategically, have the capacity to access and serve the hospital? Can the site be well served by public transport?
4. Will the site allow / encourage the sustainable use of resources?
5. Is the utilities infrastructure sufficient?
6. Will the site impact current healthcare services?
7. Is there sufficient space around the hospital building to enhance and support patients,
8. staff and visitors?
9. Is the site in a quiet location?
10. Is there enough dedicated car parking and is it suitable?
11. Is the site directly below the flight path to the airport?
12. Is the site in the Built-Up Area?
13. Is the site on brownfield (previously developed) land?
14. Is the site a greenfield site?
15. Can the site be accessed from various directions?
16. Can the site be accessed by dedicated cycle routes?
17. Can any public facility or amenity that is lost be compensated for?
18. Is there a risk of pollution or contaminated land?
19. Will there be a detrimental impact on the local population during the operation of the hospital?
20. Will there be a detrimental impact on the local population during construction of the hospital?
21. will the site allow a building that will fit in with the built character of the area?
22. Will the historic environment / assets be lost or harmed?
23. Will development of the site harm important views?

A Non-Profit Organisation NPO1277 Email: Friends@ournewhospital.org.je

To Our Friends of Friends

Bulletin 2: An Analysis of the Our Hospital (OH) Site Selection Process

27 August 2020

(©Copyright Friends of Our New Hospital 2020)

Introduction

Following on from our Bulletin 1 this Bulletin offers our brief review of the Government's site selection process for Our Hospital ("OH").

The Government published a number of documents and commentary on the Government website[1]. Of special note are the Site Selection Paper[2] and The Kit of Parts.[3] There is also reference to the role of the Citizens' Panel in the site selection process. The public assumption is that the Panel decided on the shortlist of sites. Nothing could be further from the truth. Their sole responsibility was to help derive the set of criteria for the OH site. Their function was to be the face of "public consultation".

The actual site selection was carried out by five civil servants:

• The Director General, Health and Community Services, Caroline Landon

• Clinical Director, Our Hospital project, Professor Ashok Handa

• Our Hospital Interim Project Director, Richard Bannister

• The Chief of Staff, Catherine Madden

• The Director of Natural Environment, Willie Peggie

Of the five carrying out the site selection, Willie Peggie has been in Jersey for 15 years, the others are recently recruited under the stewardship of the States Chief Executive, Charlie Parker. Two are on temporary contracts, one of whom has barely set foot in the island. One has been here for approximately 18 months and one for a little over six months. None are local.

Hospital Options

In a normal site selection process, it would be helpful to know the size of the hospital, as set out in a design brief, before the site selection process started. In fact, the process began in January 2020 with the selection of the Citizens' Panel. A very preliminary outline design brief was finally published, as the Kit of Parts, on 20th July 2020. Within it are two options for the size of the new hospital:

(Bulletin 2 Continued)

1. Option 1 – A main site with a ground floor area supported by a separate site facility alongside the main building housing the clinical and support services with an ancillary site directly adjacent

to, or up to 50 metres away, providing non-clinical essential support services:

• The ground floor hospital area (including external circulation areas) of 23,243m²

• An adjacent site of ground floor area 8,504 m²

• Car parking – 800 spaces over 2 x floors = 9,219 m² or existing parking capacity

2. Option 2 – A main site, with a basement supporting the functioning of the hospital. This allows the total ground floor area to be marginally smaller than Option 1 and enables the essential support services to be co-located within the new hospital building without the need to increase the building's height to incorporate an interstitial service floor. It retains the need for a separate facility alongside, or close to the main building, but this site could be further away – clinicians are agreed that some services could be up to 15 minutes' walk from the main building. Essential

ground floor hospital area requirement (including external circulation areas) = 22,890 m²  

• Nearby site = 3,590m²

• Car parking – 800 spaces over 2 x floors = 9,219 m² or existing parking capacity  

This is the option that allows the selection of The Peoples Park and is a fix', similar to proposed the Philip Ozouf dual site proposal of 2013 with the inherent difficulties of parking in Patriotic Street, and little room for expansion, other than upwards, plus a double basement for the maintenance areas, again with no room for expansion. It does, however, remain a very real threat to the project as the project team seem determined to provide a town site for the hospital, at whatever cost.

Where are Warwick Farm and St Saviour's Hospital as Potential Sites?

It is worth reading the matrix for the site selection on page 34 of the Site Selection Paper[1] which shows the criteria used to exclude both Warwick Farm and St Saviour's hospital sites, both of which are available and in the ownership of the States. In our opinion, their removal from contention was deliberate and had nothing to do with the Citizens' Panel. Andium Homes and other developers have expressed an interest in both sites for housing and, if they are suitable for housing, they are suitable for a hospital. Emergency 'blue light' drivers have stated that neither site presents a problem to them and both sites would produce less traffic spread throughout the day (and coming from different directions) than a housing estate of 300 houses would, all trying to access the road network at peak hours.

So, let us examine the sites chosen:

Millbrook. The site is split by a main road. The Nightingale field is owned by the Boot family foundation and has covenants on it preventing development and building. The two fields to the north

(Bulletin 2 Continued)

of the road are each owned by the houses at the northern edge of those fields. The Nightingale field is open to the sea to the south across Victoria Avenue and in winter, the storms that batter the sea wall. There appears to be no consideration given to the detrimental impact on the Glass Church. It will also require a multi-storey car park, presumably on the northern half of the site with access to the hospital site across a busy main road. It is now subject to a Report and Proposition by the Connétable of St Lawrence for its removal from the shortlist, to be debated in early September.

St Andrew's Park. This is a public park in the middle of an urban area with St Andrew's Church at the eastern end of. The park slopes gently down from the north to the south. In the centre is a listed dolmen. As with Millbrook, access would be from the busy main road into the parkland. Again, parking will be an additional issue as the proposal includes a two-storey car park. This site is also subject to a Report and Proposition by the Connétable of St Helier, for its removal from the site shortlist, which will be debated in the States on 8th September.

The Peoples Park. Again, it is a public park and, as the Connétable of St Helier points out, was rejected by the States as the site of the Future Hospital in February 2016. It simply is not big enough to put the required plate sizes on the park, let alone build the other basic facilities described above, nor can it accommodate dedicated parking on site, Patriotic Street car park being deemed suitable. Most importantly, it only has room for limited (15%) future expansion and would require a six-storey tower block, as shown in the OH Kit of Parts[2].

St Saviour – Five Oaks. This site is split by the main road to St Martin. It is a huge site that includes the existing HCS laundry site, the HCS offices, the old JEP offices and Les Amis, the latter apparently without prior warning, or consultation. On the other side of the road is the Greenfields youth detention centre.

Overdale. This is a large site stretching from the old isolation hospital overlooking the sea, to the crematorium, provided the Jersey Water office site and a small granite cottage that was on the housing market in 2019 are included within it. Across the road to the east are two large fields that are needed in order to fit the ancillary buildings, as the hospital building would have to be a relatively low rise' and therefore with a long plate size. The report states that Overdale, site 35a, without the two fields across the road," The development area is limited and could not accommodate either Option"

Sitting on its escarpment above St Helier, access to the Overdale site is an issue, but could be resolved by taking over the King George V Homes from Andium Homes and building a new entry from the Inner Road, up the re-entrant onto the Overdale site, with a multi storey car park built into the existing slope and hill to the east of the new access road. Then the whole site, including the redundant isolation hospital and the fir trees that have grown in front of it, would have to be levelled and a low rise set of buildings, built and not higher than the existing and currently closed Samares Rehabilitation Ward . It would be unsurprising if this site turned out to be the most expensive to develop.

(Bulletin 2 Continued) Summary

Sadly, the site selection process turns out to be a fix, whatever the site selection paper says. The exclusion of St Saviour' Hospital and Warwick Farm is a disgrace, but nothing is going to hold-up the juggernaut of the OH project.

Let us hope that the two reports and propositions calling for the removal of St Andrew's Park, by the Connétable of St Helier, and Millbrook, by the Connétable of St Lawrence, plus the two petitions, one calling for the removal of The Peoples Park, St Andrew's Park and Millbrook, the other calling for

Warwick Farm and St Saviour's Hospital to be placed on the shortlist of sites, are respected and accepted by the States Assembly when it returns after its summer break on 8th September 2020.

As always, we invite your comments and suggestions.

"Friends of Our New Hospital"

Chair - Brigadier Bruce Willing CBE

Tom Binet - Graham Bisson – Peter Funk – Jean Lelliott