Three contenders for Jersey top job share hospital vision

Options remain over the future of health care in Jersey

All three would-be Jersey chief ministers say they want to build new health facilities across several sites.

Deputies Ian Gorst, Sam Mezec and Lyndon Farnham are hoping to replace Deputy Kirstina Moore, after she lost a vote of no confidence.

Each candidate has told the BBC they would not seek to undo work on hospital plans under Ms Moore's tenure.

Her government had been developing plans for units at Overdale, Kensington Place and St Saviour's Hospital.

Deputy Kristina Moore lost her role as chief minister after States members supported the no-confidence vote

The States Assembly will decide on Thursday which candidate will replace Ms Moore.

More than £169m has been spent on four different hospital development projects since 2012.

Mr Farnham led the hospital project during the 2018-2022 political term, at the end of which planning permission was granted for a hospital campus at Overdale.

Following the general election, he raised a number of concerns about new proposals, overseen by Tom Binet, for an inpatient unit at Overdale, an outpatient facility at Kensington Place and a health village at St Saviour's Hospital.

Overdale (above), Kensington Place and the existing hospital site at Gloucester Street could be redeveloped

But speaking in a BBC interview ahead of Thursday's vote, Mr Farnham said: "Getting the hospital built is a priority, and I'm not for going back.

"I'm right behind Deputy Binet and the plans they've developed.

"I felt the single site was a good solution because you consolidated everything.

"It was more logistically and financially advantageous to do that, but actually what Deputy Binet has planned is not a million miles away from what we had."

Sam Mezec, Ian Gorst and Lyndon Farnham say they want to build new health facilities across several sites

He continued: "The opposition and the abuse I got over the single hospital site was one of the most unpleasant times of my political career, pushing that project through, albeit with the backing of the-then States Assembly.

"It's clear the majority of islanders don't want it.

"It's clear that the current States Assembly don't want it, and I've listened to them.

"I don't see there's any advantage in me just standing by something that realistically is not going to be approved.

"The alternative is we get behind what's on the table now and we push that forward."

In a statement on Tuesday, Mr Binet confirmed his support for Mr Farnham as Jersey's next chief minister, saying "a great deal of common ground" existed between the pair.

Just hours earlier, Mr Gorst had told the BBC that if he was elected as the island's next political leader, he would ask Mr Binet "to lead the hospital project to fruition", either as infrastructure minister or as an assistant chief minister in a new government.

"The hospital has got to be the acute hospital at Overdale as currently proposed by the government," said Mr Gorst, a former chief minister and external relations minister, who served as treasury minister in Ms Moore's cabinet.

"I would be really disappointed if anything else happens.

"It's affordable, it's achievable, and we can actually get started during this next two and a half years.

"We've got to stop arguing about it and saying, 'Oh, I've got a better idea,' or, 'I've got a cheaper idea'. It's within our grasp."

In his BBC interview, Reform Jersey leader Mr Mezec said: "We are too far down the line now to start messing about with hospital plans yet again.

"Reform Jersey has never tried to get in the way and start terms of office by scrapping the previous government's plans and starting from scratch, but successive governments doing that is why we are in the mess we are in.

"So despite our positions in the past, we're going to work with what we've got.

"There's been 18 months of work done on a project. I think we need to have a very quick look at it, to tweak it, to get the most out of it as possible.

"But I don't think we should be going back to the drawing board because it will just end up costing us tens of millions of pounds more."