‘The assets of SEL are not for sale at a discounted price’
SARK Electricity has claimed that the island’s government has pulled the plug on plans for a rival grid system and is now instead trying to buy the utility at a cut-price sale.
But managing director Alan Witney-Price said he was in process of selling the utility to another party, with the sale set to complete in April.
Mr Witney-Price said he had been told that after a meeting on Wednesday evening, Sark’s Policy & Finance Committee notified conseillers it no longer intended to pursue plans to create a second standalone grid and power generation system on Sark.
‘P&F has spent £175,000 on a project that appears to have only ever been intended as an attempt to persuade SEL that it should sell at a discount,' said Mr Witney-Price.
‘This money would have been far better spent reinforcing the Coupee and protecting this vital artery to Little Sark so that SEL could complete its cable replacement programme.’
Sark is currently dependent on SEL, a private company, for its electricity supply and generation through diesel turbines.
Chief Pleas has previously described this system as ‘obsolete, dangerous, expensive and at high risk of failure’.
The island’s government unveiled ambitious plans in January last year to replace the ageing grid and introduce renewables, at a cost of more than £11m.
Mr Witney-Price claimed that P&F was now seeking a £1.5m. loan from the States of Guernsey, a third of which would be used to acquire the assets of his company, and the balance to undertake works on the local grid.
‘The assets of SEL are not for sale at a discounted price and certainly they are not going to be offered in any kind of fire sale to P&F.’
He said he would fight any attempt of compulsory purchase, or removal of the company’s assets, through the courts.
Mr Witney-Price said in November that he was in the final stages of a process to sell the company to an unnamed buyer.
SEL has also written a letter, seen by the Guernsey Press, to Lord Ponsonby, the Minister of Justice with responsibility for the Crown Dependencies, to raise its concerns that Chief Pleas might derail the prospective sale.
Mr Witney-Price added that the purchaser had been in discussions with representatives of Chief Pleas for weeks about their plans to transition SEL to a community-owned entity.
The Guernsey Press approached both P&F chairman John Guille and the Sark Community Power project for comment yesterday, but they had not responded by the time of publication.
