GSD welcomes Rooke care capacity but demands ‘proper consultation’ for residents and answers on costs

The GSD has welcomed plans to expand elderly residential care at the Rooke facility but said the move leaves unanswered questions over the cost to taxpayers, consultation with residents and families, the future of Mount Alvernia and the Gibraltar Government’s long-term strategy for elderly care.

The Opposition said the announcement provided some clarity more than six years after the project was first announced but accused the Government of U-turns over a development that had originally been conceived as a privately-owned and operated joint venture.

The criticism follows Tuesday’s announcement that the Gibraltar Health Authority will purchase the Rooke modular building and operate it as a public elderly residential and nursing care facility.

Residents from Mount Alvernia, people in Cochrane Ward and long-stay patients at St Bernard’s Hospital waiting for elderly care are expected to move there before the end of the year. The 170-room building has capacity for 218 residents, with more than 200 people potentially transferring into it.

The purchase price has not yet been disclosed while financing with a commercial bank is finalised.

The Minister for Health, Care and Business, Gemma Arias Vasquez, said the construction cost had previously been put at around £38m, with the final purchase price also set to include fit-out costs and interest incurred during the development. Further details are expected later this month.

Against that backdrop, the GSD said it supported additional residential places, particularly where these allowed elderly people to remain closer to the city centre, and acknowledged the need to provide places for people waiting to enter Elderly Residential Services and to free up beds at the hospital.

But it said additional capacity was “only part of the story”, questioning how the project had evolved from its original model and what the final cost would be.

“The GSD welcomes additional capacity for elderly care and wants Rooke to succeed for the residents who will call it home,” said Atrish Sanchez, the Shadow Minister for ERS and Care.

“But supporting better facilities for our elderly does not require us to ignore how we got here.”

“Residents and families deserve proper consultation.”

“The community deserves to know the future of Mount Alvernia.”

“Taxpayers deserve to know what this project has cost and whether it represents value for money.”

“And Gibraltar deserves to know what the Government’s long-term plan for elderly residential care actually is.”

“After more than six years, these are not unreasonable questions.”

“They are questions that should already have answers.”

“The GSD will continue to ask them until those answers are provided.”

The GSD said the state should have a key role in providing social care for elderly people but argued the history of the Rooke project raised questions that remained unresolved.

It noted the development had started as a joint venture with a Chinese-owned entity and said modular construction had initially been promoted as a quicker and cheaper way of delivering the facility.

Instead, the Opposition said, the project had been “massively delayed”.

It said that for years the Government had justified more than £38m disbursed by the Gibraltar Savings Bank on the basis that the facility would be privately owned and operated and that the money would presumably be repaid.

The GSD also pointed to the GSLP/Liberals’ 2023 manifesto, which it said envisaged residents moving into Rooke in early 2024 and the facility being privately run, as well as an expressions of interest process issued by the owners earlier this year for management of the building.

It said the GSD would have approached the provision of elderly care differently and described the original joint venture as “flawed from the start”, questioning where the anticipated benefits of speed and cost from modular construction had materialised.

The Opposition accused the Government of leaving taxpayers to resolve the failure of what it described as one of the flagship projects of the “so-called” National Economic Plan.

It questioned whether a purpose-built facility commissioned directly by the government could have been delivered more economically without joint-venture partners.

The GSD also rejected Ms Arias Vasquez’s description of the latest decision as a “new chapter”, saying that did not address the history of the project.

A central part of its criticism focused on consultation with residents and their families.

The Opposition recalled that on August 28 Ms Arias Vasquez had said residents and relatives would hear from the GHA Director General and from her before anyone else.

The GSD said it agreed that was the correct approach but claimed it did not appear to have been followed.

It said its understanding was that, aside from a meeting with what it described as a very small group of family members who were subsequently shown around Rooke, ERS residents and relatives more widely had still not received official communication explaining the decision, the proposed move or how it would affect them.

The Opposition said the decisions involved people’s homes and care arrangements and potentially significant changes at a vulnerable stage of their lives.

It said residents and families should have heard directly from decision-makers before learning about the plans through Government publicity, video or the media, and should have been given timely information and an opportunity to ask questions.

The GSD also pointed to assurances given by Ms Arias Vasquez in Parliament in January and February that there would be a consultation process involving ERS residents and relatives.

It said the Government should now explain what consultation had taken place, whether all affected residents and families had been involved and whether it had established that they wanted to move.

At Tuesday’s press conference, Ms Arias Vasquez said Mount Alvernia residents would be asked individually whether they wished to transfer and that the Government expected the vast majority, “if not all”, to agree.

But she also acknowledged that Mount Alvernia and Rooke could not be operated concurrently if some residents chose not to move, with other arrangements having to be considered depending on the numbers involved.

The GSD said that position meant residents were effectively being presented with a fait accompli and compelled to move, despite previous assurances that this would not happen.

It also demanded clarity on what would happen to Mount Alvernia if it was emptied, pointing to longstanding Opposition concerns about its condition, delays to refurbishment and issues raised by residents and families.

The Gibraltar Government said on Tuesday that no decision had yet been taken on the future of Mount Alvernia.

The building belongs to the trustees of the John Mackintosh Trust and Ms Arias Vasquez said discussions with them would follow once the immediate focus on residents and their transfer had been addressed.

The GSD said the question could not be left unanswered, particularly because Rooke was likely to be close to capacity relatively soon after the planned moves.

The GHA acknowledged on Tuesday that the new facility is expected to be close to capacity from the outset.

Dr Paul Bosio, its Director General, said the wider strategy would therefore also have to focus on helping people remain independent and at home for as long as possible as Gibraltar’s population ages.

The Opposition also pressed for full disclosure of the financial arrangements.

It said Ms Arias Vasquez had not provided an updated cost when questioned in Parliament in July and had again not provided a figure when asked following Tuesday’s announcement.

The GSD said that if the GHA had carried out a cost-benefit analysis and assessed different options, the relevant financial information should be available.

It called on the Government to disclose the development cost, the amount the GHA will pay to acquire the facility, any further fit-out expenditure, how the project has been funded and the annual operating cost.

The GHA said on Tuesday that it expects to use around £5m a year currently allocated to repayments on the financing of St Bernard’s Hospital to service the new borrowing once that arrangement ends this year.

Dr Bosio also estimated that operating Rooke would cost around 25% less than the GHA currently spends across its elderly residential care sites, with care at the new facility projected at about £90,000 per bed annually.

The GSD said there were further questions on the model of care, staffing, planning, safety, building approvals and regulatory oversight that it intended to pursue.