Guernsey's Les Bourgs Hospice ready for first patients

Jurat Tanguy said the hospice would cost £750,000 annually to run

Les Bourgs Hospice will take its first patients in January 2012, having raised £3m of its £4m funding target.

Chairman of the Board of Governors of Les Bourgs, Jurat Mike Tanguy, said the first patients would arrive at the rebuilt hospice on 9 January.

Demolition of the former hospice on the site of Les Bourgs began in June 2010.

Mr Tanguy said rebuilding funds of £1m still had to be raised and the annual running costs would be at least three quarters of a million pounds.

"This is not as horrific as it would seem," he said.

"Since the hospice was opened those costs have been averaging about half a million a year, which the island has sustained."