Need to press accelerator on projects

One of the ways of managing that situation in the medium term is through a major project to revamp the hospital site to bring the old wards up to modern standards and potentially move them.

This reprofiling project has been worked on for successive States terms, a sign of both its scale and complexity, but also of how long it can take for major developments like this to come to fruition in the public sector.

The business case is now due to be finished by September.

It is a key project to unlock other areas of transformation in health and social care, improve the service and ensure efficiency.

The States capital programme agreed earlier this term had phase one of this project being in delivery by the end of last year.

It joins a long list of projects which are not progressing through the system at the kind of pace required for the States to meet its infrastructure needs, and with it provide some relief to the wider economy through the construction industry too.

The States failure to progress capital projects was laid bare in the 2017 accounts.

Last year, just £8.2m. was spent.

To put that in perspective, this Assembly has a programme that was first costed at some £236m.

Historically, there has been a persistent failure to meet fiscal rules for spending on infrastructure – set at 3% of GDP – even before the upward revision on that figure and that needs to be addressed.

There is an argument too that some of the spending on capital, such as re-capitalising Aurigny, also helps mask the underinvestment in bricks and mortar projects.

The latest programme runs up to 2021, while there are also projects that should be in the planning stages to be handed over to the next Assembly to keep a consistent flow.

Policy & Resources has indicated it will listen with a sympathetic ear to committees who need more staff to accelerate their capital projects. That will need to be watched closely.