Too late to fix hospital black hole, says deputy

The States has apologised for the delay to the opening of the new clinical care unit

The new president of Guernsey's Health and Social Care Committee (HSC) has conceded there was "no political oversight" of the first phase of the hospital modernisation project.

Last week the BBC revealed the project to build a new critical care unit was delayed because of problems with the building work.

Deputy George Oswald, who was a non-States member of the last HSC committee, said "the States does not handle big budget projects well".

"I think the problem is lack of resourcing, we try and do things on the cheap probably because we know we're a small island with a small community and not a lot of money," he said.

HSC said "sadly but unavoidably, the CCU would continue to be delayed until essential remedial works have been completed" but it did not give a timeframe.

Contractors Rihoys and Son said the work to extend the hospital had been challenging.

The BBC understands work is under way to fix the defects by contractors Rihoys and Son, which was commissioned to work on the full hospital modernisation project.

HSC was negotiating with Rihoys about how this work would be funded.

Deputy George Oswald was elected unopposed to become the President of the Health and Social Care Committee

Speaking about the problems, Oswald said: "We don't invest in the technical experts we need right at the beginning to ensure the project goes the right way.

"I think that was very apparent in phase two."

Last year it was revealed officers knew about a potential £30m overspend for phase 2 of the hospital modernisation project.

It led to an inquiry which found no problems with the way the States managed big building projects and a review of the hospital project by a UK firm, which has not been publicly released.

'Technologically difficult'

Oswald said: "That has now been resolved but possibly too late to influence the problem with the black hole we had and as far as I'm aware certainly didn't involve it at stage one.

"It was all sourced in-house because that was the cheapest option but building hospitals and commissioning hospitals is an expensive and technologically difficult thing to do.

"The NHS is littered with examples of where hospital builds have gone wrong to the detriment of both the local population and also sometimes to the detriment of the builders who got themselves involved in it."