Excellent Progress With The Relocation Of Samares Ward To St Ewolds

18 March 2024

In the next couple of months the few remaining rehabilitation patients in the much-loved Samares Ward at Overdale will move into the newly converted wing in St Ewolds, the St Helier-owned residential home on Trinity Hill. Anyone who knows both sites agrees that St Ewolds, in its peaceful and beautiful location on the outskirts of the town, is an excellent choice.
The signing of the contract between St Helier and the Health and Infrastructure Departments on 11th March moves the new acute hospital at Overdale one big step closer. If the Health Minister’s plans stay on track, construction at Overdale could now begin in 2025 with completion in 2028.

The move from Overdale to St Ewold’s will finally free the whole of the old Overdale hospital site for the planned new acute hospital. Demolition is already well advanced at Overdale but the Westmount Centre which houses Samares Ward still needs to be vacated in order to clear the whole site. All the other services were successfully relocated from Overdale to the new Enid Quenault Health and Wellbeing Centre at Les Quennevais last September.

Concept plans for the new acute hospital were revealed at the beginning of March. The sketches show a much more attractive, welcoming and manageable design than the ugly mono-block one-site hospital produced three years ago. The new acute hospital will cater for all emergency services, surgery and inpatient care. As defined by the NHS an acute hospital is “A hospital that provides inpatient medical care and other related services for surgery, acute medical condition or injuries (usually for a short term illness or condition)”.

Health and Community Services (HCS) has announced that it will hold more public consultations on its plans for Overdale in May. These will be followed this summer by what is known as the Functional Brief, in other words the detailed plans for what will be in the new acute hospital. After that comes a new planning application as well as the approval of the business case by the States Assembly. Even then the project could still face a planning enquiry before it is finally signed off.

HCS still hopes that the whole process can be completed by the end of this year and that construction could then begin in 2025. If all goes according to plan Jersey could have a new acute hospital at Overdale by 2028.

This still leaves open the question of the ambulatory hospital (defined by the NHS as a place where services are provided for outpatients who do not need overnight care). This will be built next to the General Hospital on the cleared site in Kensington Place. It is now known that there are plans to buy a fourth property in Kensington Place although there is still no indication of what will go into this large, now empty space, nor the future of the present hospital buildings.

Another unknown is what will happen at St Saviours which is now earmarked as a mental health village. Facilities for dementia patients are badly needed and it is possible that rehabilitation will move from St Ewolds to a new purpose built centre at St Saviours at the end of the present nine-year lease.

It is now beginning to look as though we shall have the whole scheme for the Island’s New Healthcare Facilities by the end of this year. If so this will be good news indeed.

For more information or comments please email: friends@ournewhospital.org.je

The Friends Of Our New Hospital Steering Group

Mary Venturini (Chair)
John Baker, Graham Bisson, Ann Esterson, Peter Funk, David Pirouet, Stephen Regal,
Tamara Vanmegglen, Bruce Willing CBE

https://www.facebook.com/groups/friendsofournewhospital

P O Box 442
Jersey JE4 5RE
18 March 2024