BoH needs £8.6m. for its next phase

THE Board of Health wants £8.6m. to put the next part of its site-development plan into action. The money - to be requested at this month's States meeting - would be used to redevelop Alderney's Mignot Memorial Hospital and plan the remaining phases of the site-development scheme approved by the House in 1999. The total cost of the project is around £57m., but it has been split into four phases which will take until at least July 2008 to complete. Long-term aims include transferring mental health services from the Castel Hospital and making sure that services for older people are no longer provided in substandard and outdated accommodation. The main thrust of the site-development plan is to centralise acute health care at the PEH and to move from there services that do not benefit from being on-site. The board aims to keep travel distances between wards and departments to a minimum and to provide adaptability for long-term planning needs. It wants to move services from the Castel Hospital to La Corbinerie and provide an acute mental health ward, an assessment and respite ward for confused, older people, a psychiatric day centre, a clinic and office space. The social centre, provided by the Friends of Castel Hospital and the Alzheimer's Society, would be included in the new development. The new wards will allow men and women, and people with different kinds of mental health conditions, to be separated as necessary. Two new accommodation blocks are planned for where John Henry House and a staff bungalow now stand. The first building would comprise bedsits with communal living rooms. The other would have self-contained one-bedroom flats available for single staff or couples. The board hopes that providing high-quality, affordable accommodation will encourage professional staff to work, and stay, in Guernsey. Staff at John Henry House would move temporarily to the Duchess of Kent House. A three-storey clinical block is also planned, which would be built partly on the current nurses' home site. Initially it would include two medical wards, which would replace Arnold and Brock. The block would be based on a template allowing for flexible planning of the interior to meet the needs of rapidly-changing health services. The Board of Health's site-development plan also details the progress made since 1999. This includes building Les Alouettes, a home for people with a learning disability; converting the Arlington Court Hotel into staff accommodation; alterations to the occupational therapy and physiotherapy departments at the King Edward VII Hospital; and replacing the PEH's incinerator.