'Electricity not for sale'

SARK'S electricity company is to remain in its present ownership and is not for sale - to the Barclay family or anyone else.

In a letter to its customers this week, Sark Electricity's David Gordon-Brown stated unequivocally that despite the island's 'rumour mill' producing reports that the company had been sold, the reports were untrue and unlikely to become true.

'We haven't even been approached by the Barclays and might be surprised if they did,' Mr Gordon-Brown told customers. 'If you ignore all the innuendo and negative rumours, a utility company like Sark Electricity doesn't appear to be a natural fit in their portfolio of hotels and media companies.'

The rumour mill increased noticeably in recent times following the death of Mr Gordon-Brown's father Tim and was fuelled by the fact that the power station and offices are on the Aval du Creux tenement, owned by the Barclay family.

However, David said in his letter that after his father's passing the family openly discussed the company's future and there was 'an immediate and unanimous decision that we do not want to sell the company our father spent half his life nurturing and growing'.

David said that although the family was not selling, no one could reliably predict the future and he disclosed that the matter had been discussed with Sark's General Purposes and Advisory Committee.

'When GP & A approached us to discuss the situation, we readily agreed to try to find an "insurance policy" to guarantee that if the company was sold in the future the purchaser would not be able to take unfair advantage of the company's effective monopoly,' he said.

It's a sad reflection on some of Sark's residents that David has been forced to dispel these rumours. I heard them - along with the customary assertions these people use, such as 'I know for a fact' or 'I have it on the best authority' - and simply asked David if there was any substance in them.

When told that there wasn't, that was it as far as I was concerned. It's a pity others didn't do the same. The last thing a grieving family wants is that sort of nonsense about their business peddled, often by those who should demonstrate a more responsible example.

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Earlier this week upwards of 50 residents braved some nasty weather to discuss new legislation concerning who can live where. Called by the Development Control Committee, the informal discussion was led by chairman Tony Dunks.

Broadly speaking, the housing occupancy situation in Sark since 1976 has been that a local market was created then and all dwellings built since - other than those built on the site of a pre-1976 dwelling - have to be occupied by people who have lived in the island for at least 15 years.

The remainder are open market dwellings and can be occupied by virtually anyone.

The committee is now seeking to update the legislation - hence this week's public discussion - and a couple of things impressed me about the gathering. The first was that Conseiller Dunks has lived with the drafts of the planned legislation long enough to know his subject thoroughly - always an advantage and something which is not always the case with Chief Pleas members.

The second was the lengths to which ordinary residents had gone to familiarise themselves with what the committee has in mind by studying the draft and seeking to interpret what seems to be in the minds of the legislators - again, no mean feat.

What seemed clear at the end of the discussion was that a fair amount of tweaking will be necessary before the final draft is discussed by the legislature because a number of matters were raised which will need addressing and perhaps amending.

What the exercise did demonstrate was the value of having a full public discussion at which everyone can hear what everyone else is saying - something which the conseillers might consider when discussing their pre-Chief Pleas surgeries at which talks between politicians and their constituents are held on a one to one basis.

* The email address for comment is fallesark@sark.net.