Although admitting she could not evidence or substantiate it, she said her sense was the predecessor P&R had taken a more bullish approach to the matter than she felt her committee would have done.
Deputy de Sausmarez was asked what legal options had been considered by the committee both before and during the legal process. She said her committee had come to the process ‘very, very late’ following June’s general election, and had not been involved when the original decisions were taken.
‘There may have been other options that may have been preferred had there been a different political make-up around that committee table,' she said.
The lease for the cafe was put out to tender in April 2024. It was awarded to a new bidder, but long-term tenants Belmiro de Freitas and Manuela Walter refused to leave when they were due to be evicted in October of that year, and reopened this summer.
In September they won their case in the Royal Court and were awarded a three-year stay of eviction.
The States fought the case using commercial lawyers from a local firm, and their costs topped £100,000 before the case came to court. Although the States has said it intends to get the costs of the legal action repaid, it is now thought that they could double by the time the process is completed.
The issue was raised, as expected, at yesterday’s first public hearing of the new Scrutiny Management Committee when it challenged the States Property Unit.
Deputy de Sausmarez said she was happy for P&R to work with Scrutiny in providing any information about the case that could be shared, but warned transparency could be limited due to the case still being subject to legal process.
She added she did not know the formal process that had been gone through to select the States’ outsourced legal provider for the case because she ‘was not around the committee table’ at the time it was decided. The Law Officers Chambers had advised the committee that it was unable to take on the legal case because it did not have enough resources available.
‘We want to sit here and be able to answer your questions as fully as possible, however we are not the people that are able to provide you with a definitive answer,’ said Deputy de Sausmarez.
‘All I can give you is a general sense, and it is purely a personal perspective, because I don’t know and I wasn’t party to those discussions.’
She said her committee was keen to understand how the States could end up in similar situations less frequently – or not at all – in future.
The P&R committee at the time of the tender's publication was led by Lyndon Trott, alongside deputies Heidi Soulsby, Jonathan Le Tocq, Bob Murray and John Gollop.
The previous committee which was in place until December 2023 had been under the presidency of lawyer Peter Ferbrache, alongside deputies Murray, Le Tocq, Mark Helyar and David Mahoney.
Deputy Mahoney was the lead politician on property until he resigned and then Deputy Murray took over the role. Deputy Murray said at the time of the tender process that he had supported the ‘operational decision’ to go out to tender.
P&R said at the time it was ‘obliged to ensure we are doing the best thing possible on behalf of the community with the important sites we look after, and that means at appropriate times we need to go out to the market and see what other prospective applicants would put forward.
‘This should not be seen as a criticism of any current tenant, it is just good commercial practice.’
Deputy Helyar has consistently asked formal written and parliamentary questions about the process of the cafe case, with a special focus on the legal costs incurred. He called for mediation in the dispute before the case came to court.
You need to be logged in to comment. If you had an account on our previous site, you can migrate your old account and comment profile to this site by visiting this page and entering the email address for your old account. We'll then send you an email with a link to follow to complete the process.