Education officials are among about 130 staff, mostly States employees, moving into the northern end of the building, which opened as a Sixth Form Centre in 2005, after students were relocated last month to a new temporary home at La Mare de Carteret.
Policy & Resources president Lindsay de Sausmarez told the Guernsey Press Politics Podcast that Les Varendes could probably still be included in the Education Committee’s current rethink of how to provide A-level studies in the future even if her committee, which is responsible for States’ property, does not stop the movement of staff into the building.
Listen to the full interview with P&R president Lindsay de Sausmarez on the Guernsey Press Politics Podcast
‘I don’t think you necessarily need to do that in order to keep that option open if that is what your aim is,’ she said.
‘I think where it becomes more challenging is if you spent a very significant amount of money making alterations to the building to re-purpose it.’
Deputy de Sausmarez was previously critical of moving staff to Les Varendes and students to La Mare. Education’s new vice-president, Deputy Andy Cameron, has called it ‘fiscally and morally irresponsible’.
She said on the podcast that since her election as P&R president in July she had ‘certainly asked some questions’ about the move but had not obtained ‘enough clarity on the answers’ to know whether any part of it could be paused or stopped.
The States agreed in 2021 to build a new Sixth Form Centre at Les Ozouets, next to the Guernsey Institute, which is currently being developed, but it was later paused for financial reasons.
The cost of the next phase of construction, the majority of which relates to the sixth form building, has now doubled to up to £50m.
Education has indicated that the scheme may no longer be feasible. It has put all options back on the table in a new study of alternative schemes. But Education president Deputy Paul Montague has all but ruled out keeping the Sixth Form Centre permanently at its temporary home on the west coast.
Deputy de Sausmarez said that P&R had not needed to ask Education to look again at alternative options because the previous committee’s plans had been ‘effectively put into abeyance’ and were seen as ‘just not affordable to progress’.
She said Education must be allowed to complete its new study and P&R did not want to pre-empt the outcome.
Asked if she could see circumstances in which P&R would be prepared to back funding for the development of a Sixth Form Centre at Les Ozouets, Deputy de Sausmarez, who has a child herself at the temporary facility at La Mare, said she could give her personal opinion only and not her committee’s.
‘It’s fair to say that I have never been persuaded by the rationale for that particular model, partly or possibly primarily because of the challenges related to scale,’ she said.
‘Since that proposal was agreed by the States, that challenge has become more pronounced.
‘We’ve had updated figures which show that we have even fewer students than we originally envisaged. That really does have a material impact on the quality of education that can be delivered and things like the breadth of options available to students. It’s not to say there aren’t ways of overcoming those challenges. I think there are. But we need to be satisfied that we have looked at this in light of the information that we have now.’
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