The proposed improvement works to St Ewold’s Residential Care Home include increasing the community spaces on each floor, installing a sprinkler system and replacing the building’s external render.
It is also proposed that en-suite showers would be provided in each of the bedrooms, which currently have only an en-suite toilet, while the facility’s outside areas would also be improved with new planting and landscaping.
The plans come after St Helier House was forced to close last month because of fire safety concerns and also follows the closure of Maison de Ville in 2014. Both facilities were parish-run.
St Ewold’s opened in October 1994 and Silvio Alves, director of technical and environmental services for St Helier, said the home ‘requires updating in order for
the parish to continue to provide parishioners with high-quality, future-proofed facilities’.
In August, Avranches Day Nursery, which occupied part of the ground floor of the facility, closed for financial reasons. As less than half the number of its uses came from St Helier the parish took the decision not to ask ratepayers to subsidise the losses.
‘The parish moved ahead quickly to explore how the vacated space could be reconfigured to provide 20 additional nursing or dementia care bedrooms for St Ewold’s and, following a competitive tender process, a design team was appointed to oversee this stage of the care strategy,’ Mr Alves said.
‘The recent closure of St Helier House due to the defects discovered last year following the Grenfell fire tragedy makes the proposed investment in St Ewold’s all the more important so that the parish can maintain its commitment to providing first-class residential and nursing-care facilities for parishioners.’
A parish assembly is due to be held on Wednesday 28 February at 7 pm, during which the parish will seek approval of £8.3 million for the works.
Islanders can view the plans at the Town Hall or at St Ewold’s between now and the Parish Assembly. Meanwhile, the future of St Helier House will be subject to a consultation before proposals are put to a parish assembly later this year.
