Concerns about setting up development agency
THE co-ordinated development of Guernsey’s east coast still has the potential to be transformative, States members were told as debate started on the updated proposals for an agency to oversee projects in the years ahead.
Policy & Resources president Peter Ferbrache said that the development could impact on many areas, such as housing, climate change and regeneration, all issues touched on in the Government Work Plan.
P&R was proposing Peter Watson, the local resident and founder of the Vets4Pets chain, to be appointed the agency’s chairman, with Simon Kildahl and Louis Le Poidevin as members.
If members support the plans, the agency will have a budget of £250,000 over its first two years, as opposed to £1m. which was suggested the first time the agency was debated in the Assembly.
Economic Development president Neil Inder likened the agency to the Tourism Management Board, which was the start of government breaking its links with tourism, and said that this agency could be the start of a similar move in respect of government’s involvement with the east coast.
This was the wrong time to be talking about spending this amount of money when so many other areas needed support, said Deputy David De Lisle. He said the topic should be integrated into the Government Work Plan debate, due to be debate in two weeks’ time.
Development and Planning Authority member Sasha Kazantseva-Miller was worried that the current plans were setting the agency up for failure, due to a vacuum of decision-making surrounding the ports. She warned that the newly-appointed directors of the agency were going to be disappointed once ‘the rubber hits the road’ and they came upon this problem.
This would not be like the Tourism Management Board, because government would have to be involved in many decisions surrounding the east coast, she said.
The harbours had to be made fit for purpose for the future, said Deputy Al Brouard, and he hoped that the agency would have this at the forefront of its ideas.
He urged it to take care with the east coast and to not just produce ‘Milton Keynes-on-sea’, while considering some of the previous ideas that had been put forward.
Debate continues this morning.
