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The site is wrong, it has always been wrong and the project far too costly because the site is wrong. Borrowing at the level proposed will leave our children to repay a huge debt undoubtedly through further taxation and charges that also pitched against a background of rising housing and accommodation costs is simply unacceptable and puts our children at a huge disadvantage.
Nowhere in the proposals do I see any offset revenue referred to if the Gloucester Street site is finally vacated. It also seems very strange that there are no actual figures of build costs only an estimate which appears to be based solely on a series of artists' impressions and a slick video. It is therefore proposed to borrow in hope. If the new hospital was still incomplete when the £804m borrowing had been used up, what then? At the rate costs in general are rising this is a distinct possibility.
The project is being railroaded and forced upon islanders despite vast public misgivings concerning both the site and the ever-escalating costs.
To quote from Citizens Panel TOR:
"To contribute towards the process of engagement and decision making on the Our Hospital project, by providing a voice for Islanders in establishing the necessary criteria to be used in deciding on the design and location of the new hospital.
The purpose of the panel is not to determine the site of the new hospital."
Yet that last sentence is exactly what it did:
"The sites, which all passed a set of clinical and citizens' panel criteria, were:
St Andrew's Park, First Tower, St Helier
Fields north of Five Oaks, St Saviour
Millbrook playing fields with fields across Inner Road, St Lawrence Overdale, St Helier
The People's Park, St Helier"
Ref: https://www.gov.je/health/ourhospital/pages/sitesuggestion.aspx Jeff Hathaway