Harbours should be separated from airport, say boat owners
Guernsey Harbours should be separated from Guernsey Airport and both bodies, along with all States entities, brought under the scrutiny of the regulator, local boat users have said.
But the president of the States’ Trading Supervisory Board said that separation had been considered but keeping the ports as one had more advantages.
Deputy Peter Roffey also said that independent regulation was unlikely to be necessary since the States could provide economic direction.
In a joint letter to all deputies, in the run-up to a States debate on incorporation of the ports, Guernsey Water and States Works, the Guernsey Boatowners’ Association, Marine Traders’ Association and the Royal Channel Islands Yacht Club have called for a new body to be set up, ‘Harbours Co’, with its own board of directors and no joint management with the airport.
The groups’ call reflects their longstanding argument that charges imposed on boat owners and other ports users are being used to help fund the airport, which, said the groups, has lost millions over the years while the harbours have been profitable.
They claimed that the airport and harbours were combined more than 15 years ago to ‘obfuscate’ the accounts of two entities ‘which appear to have no synergy, no shared experiences and no obvious efficiencies’.
They say that while harbours consistently return an operating surplus, the airport has racked up cumulative losses of £46m. in the past 28 years and had not made a surplus since 2008.
In 2024 the airport is forecast to lose £6m.
They say that airport losses have caused maintenance and improvements at the harbours to be stalled, and so they want to see harbour finances fully separated from the airport and the harbours having their own capital reserve holding account.
The marine groups have also once again called for the ports to be placed under the scrutiny of the Guernsey Competition and Regulatory Authority to protect local consumers.
