MINISTERS have asked for work on 100 new apartments in Kensington Place to be suspended – potentially reopening the door for a dual-site hospital, the JEP understands.

Work to flatten the former Stafford and Revere hotels started earlier this summer after a planning application to replace them with one-, two- and three-bedroom flats was approved in June last year.

But the JEP has learnt that ministers have now sought to keep options open for the site – potentially setting up the latest twist in the long-running hospital saga.

Ahead of publication of a review of the Our Hospital development at Overdale,  n ministers appear to have reopened the possibility of enhancing facilities at the current General Hospital, which would allow the controversial plans for Overdale to be scaled back.

The JEP has learned that work on the new apartments on the sites of the former Revere and Stafford hotels, which adjoin the General Hospital, has been suspended because of the site’s relevance to the latest thinking on the Island’s badly needed new hospital facilities.

Infrastructure Minister Tom Binet is due imminently to publish the results of a review he is conducting of proposals for the new hospital at Overdale, for which planning approval was granted earlier this year by former Environment Minister John Young, following a public inquiry.

But news that the Kensington Place development has been placed on hold provides the first indication that political thinking may have changed the future-hospital plans.

As part of her 100-day plan, Chief Minister Kristina Moore announced in July that Deputy Binet would conduct a review of the existing proposals for Overdale with the aim of ‘securing reassurance’ that the right decision had been made or equally confirming concerns she said many Islanders had expressed on doorsteps in the run-up to the June elections.

Explaining her decision, the Chief Minister said at the time: ‘The premise of the review has got to be of ensuring that we have an appropriate and affordable solution for the Island. There’s no doubt that we need to deliver a hospital; there’s just a big question mark over whether the current plan is either appropriate or affordable.

'It’s only the responsible thing to do to ensure that such major investment is appropriate for our time and will meet our needs in appropriate fashion.’ Under previous plans for the Hospital, the Kensington Place site was earmarked for an enlarged General Hospital but it was instead made available for housing when the Our Hospital project proposed an entirely new complex which the previous States Assembly decided should be built at Overdale.