With over £200m spent going round in circles on projects to build a new hospital, one politician is leaving the door open to repeat the exercise when it comes to a much-needed new campus for Highlands College.
Deputy Alex Curtis (St Clement) has proposed an amendment to the Common Strategic Policy to be debated next month, which would remove references to progressing a new further and higher education campus in St Helier for delivery in 2032.
He argues that ministers should establish the Island’s educational requirements and demonstrate the business case before committing to a location.
There are legitimate questions about the cost and practicalities of moving Highlands. But his amendment would delete the action containing the delivery target without putting another timetable in its place.
For students and staff who have already waited years for better facilities, that risks exchanging a commitment they can hold ministers to for another open-ended discussion. The hospital fiasco should have taught States Members where that can lead.
Students have already waited
The problems at Highlands are hardly a recent discovery.
In 2018, the college’s leadership warned that its buildings were approaching the end of their economic life and that unsuitable learning environments were obstructing its ambitions.
By 2024, Scrutiny members were reporting buckets and bins collecting water inside classrooms, with parts of the estate closed off. A condition survey had identified urgent work, including fire safety concerns, structural repairs and failing infrastructure.
Those findings describe the conditions documented then, rather than a fresh inspection of every building today. They also establish how long the need for action has been known.
Even the government’s proposed 2032 opening is six years away. Students starting courses now could finish their education long before a replacement opens.
How many more cohorts should be expected to make do while politicians revisit the starting point over and over again, as they have with the new hospital project?
The hospital warning
The hospital offers an expensive warning about what happens when Jersey struggles to turn an agreed need into a completed building.
Since 2012, over £200m a has been spent on multiple attempts to deliver a new hospital, after multiple projects were U-turned on by successive governments, over political disagreements on where the best site for it would be.
Only now, after three different iterations almost got to the finish line, has the fourth attempt finally received planning permission and a construction firm been contracted to build it. In the absence of some kind of political earthquake in the next few months, the new hospital will finally be built.
But each U-turn along the way cost taxpayers tens of millions of pounds, which largely went to consultants, all while inflation and other costs ramped up the total bill that a new building would cost. The first project in 2012 was estimated to cost in the region of £250m, whilst the current proposal will cost over £710m just for the inpatients hospital, with plans for a permanent outpatients hospital likely to cost further hundreds of millions.
Every penny wasted was a penny not spent on delivering health services that benefit Islanders.
The chicken and egg problem
Alex Curtis argues that choosing a location before establishing the college’s educational requirements puts the cart before the horse. But his approach risks trapping the project in a chicken and egg dilemma where costs build up as politicians go round in circles.
It is entirely reasonable to ask what courses, services and facilities a new modern campus should provide. These will have to be key considerations in deciding what physical shape a new campus takes.
The problem is insisting those answers are something that must be settled before consideration can be given to a site, which in itself could prove such a contentious proposal that it unravels the whole thing and inspires calls to go back to the drawing board.
As we have seen happen to the hospital project multiple times, the government could spend years establishing a case for what a new campus should include, and propose a site that will manage it, only for that site to be opposed by a significant enough proportion of politicians or the public, that it provokes a years long battle to consider other sites. Then when an alternative site is found, the case can be made that the data relied on for the initial plans is sufficiently out of date that it needs to be reviewed… and so the carousel continues to spin!
Leaving the location open may sound cautious. But Jersey’s recent history shows how expensive indecision can become. It is not too much to ask politicians to learn from their predecessors’ mistakes and show some leadership.
There are arguments for and against a town campus. If a majority of States Members oppose the principle, they should settle that question early. Spending years and millions of pounds developing proposals, only to reject them over objections that were apparent from the outset, would repeat a costly and familiar mistake.
There is a strong positive case for moving Highlands into town. A campus close to the bus station could simplify students’ journeys, making public transport more convenient and reducing the temptation to drive. More young adults studying, meeting and socialising in St Helier would bring life to its streets and support cafés, shops and other local businesses. The benefits would extend beyond younger students. An accessible campus at the centre of the Island’s bus network could make lifelong learning and retraining a more practical and appealing option for Islanders of all ages.
But whichever of those arguments persuades you, the amendment before the Assembly just leaves the question unanswered. It achieves the worst of both worlds. Islanders deserve better.
The hospital should have taught the Assembly that indecision has a bill. Highlands students should not be left paying it with years of their education.