No harbour development this decade – STSB president

The States’ ongoing failure to agree a long-term plan for the ports has been dubbed ‘procrastination madness’ by the politician in charge of them.

‘Let’s face it, this is a States which doesn’t like making decisions on anything of any real significance,’ said States’ Trading Supervisory Board president Peter Roffey.

‘If the future of the ports is left for the next States, they will come at it cold, so you can assume it will be at least halfway into that term before anything much is decided and the States after that before anything much actually happens.’

Policy & Resources will shortly ask the States to approve the members, remit and funding of its new east coast development agency.

But Deputy Roffey is warning the agency could be dormant for years through no fault of its own.

‘I think the development agency is going to be in a very difficult position. It’s hard to see that it could do anything much without the strategic direction for the ports which the States has spent the past few years trying to avoid,’ he said.

P&R is proposing Peter Watson as the agency’s chairman and Simon Kildahl and Louis Le Poidevin as members.

P&R seized control of harbour planning after the States rejected a £360m. outline proposal from STSB for development at both.

There is uncertainty about the relationship between P&R and the agency in drawing up a long-term plan for the harbours. There has also been some dispute between P&R and the Development & Planning Authority about the timing of local planning briefs, which are required to guide development at the harbours.

STSB said potential investment opportunities at the harbours were now being missed. And Deputy Roffey claimed the problems extended far beyond the harbours.

‘There is now a total void over where we go with the future of our commercial harbours,’ he said.

‘One problem is that premises at the harbour have to be rented on short-term leases only because of uncertainty. There is no security of tenure and no incentive to invest, which is not good for business and does not help maximise commercial return.

‘Another problem is with waste. Longue Hougue [the inert waste site] is nearly full. We’re about to start a waste mountain there. But in the absence of strategic direction about the future of the harbours, we can’t make future plans because we’ve got no idea where inert waste is going to go.’

He said there was also an impact on the proposed development of more than 130 homes at Parc Le Lacheur, formerly Kenilworth Vinery, because of the difficulty of finalising the site’s flood defences without direction about future flood planning along the east coast.

‘The establishment of the development agency provides a real opportunity for Guernsey to realise the significant social, economic and environmental benefits that can be achieved by taking an integrated approach to the development of infrastructure along the east coast,’ said P&R in its policy letter.

The States previously agreed to provide the agency with £1m. and three members of staff during its first two years.

The Guernsey Press revealed in April that P&R wanted to cut its funding to £100,000 a year and make it operate with no staff for the rest of this States term.