Sark Electricity owner losing his patience with Chief Pleas
SARK Electricity’s owner has lost patience with negotiations about selling the company to Chief Pleas, describing it as being like ‘pushing on a piece of string’.
Part of the settlement, which averted the power being turned off at the end of November, was that a fair market value of the company would be agreed.
This would mean the island’s government, Chief Pleas, could then purchase the business and be in control of the supply price to customers.
Both parties met on Wednesday [16/1] to further discuss the sale of the company.
Sark Electricity owner David Gordon-Brown said he was told a deal would only be struck if Chief Pleas could afford to do so.
‘As they have never said what they can afford, this leaves the outcome very uncertain,’ he said.
‘They said they needed a Heads of Agreement document, so we supplied them with one over a week ago and also gave them a suitable non-disclosure agreement for their experts to sign.
‘All we’ve had from them is a receipt acknowledgement for these, but nothing more.
‘Yet at the Chief Pleas meeting they were quick to comment on the parts of these documents that they didn’t like, including some parts that we had already agreed on.
‘But they have still not responded to the company about them.’
Mr Gordon-Brown said dealing with Chief Pleas committees over the last nine years had given him a ‘very negative view’ of the Sark government.
‘We have no desire to sell the company, but it seems that selling the company is the only way to satisfy a certain element within Chief Pleas,’ he said.
‘We also believe that a government has the right to buy any company they feel would be in the public interest, so we are trying hard to make this possible for them. But it feels very one-sided.
‘If they don’t engage soon, we will have to review our options as we have lost our appetite for continuing in a situation where certain elements in Chief Pleas have been allowed to continually inflame the situation in the last nine years.’
A spokesperson for Chief Pleas said they had received a long legal agreement from lawyers acting for Sark Electricity.
‘We are taking advice on the content of the document and do not wish to comment any further at this stage,’ it said.
