Both Chief Pleas and Sark’s Seigneur, Christopher Beaumont, have refused to pay legal levies of 60p added to every unit of electricity for the month of September, and have urged other Sark residents to also boycott the tariffs. The disagreement is part of the long-running dispute between Sark’s government and the company that has led to the pursuit of compulsory purchase of the island’s sole power company.
In the latest twist, SEL managing director Alan Witney-Price has written to Chief Pleas stating that the Seigneur had written to him, warning that he would ‘consider any attempt to access my property in order to disconnect my supply as trespass and take action accordingly’.
Mr Witney-Price has said this raised significant safety concerns, and has again written to Chief Pleas in a bid to secure access to the Seigneur’s property, La Seigneurie, the ancestral seat of the Seigneur of Sark, to ‘facilitate disconnection of his services’.
In a letter he described the island’s ‘land laws’ as being ‘antiquated’ and said they did not offer protection to residents from ‘powerful landowners’.
Sark Estate Management, owned by the Barclay family, which runs a number of hotels and establishments on the island, is also believed to have written to SEL stating its staff cannot access their land without explicit prior consent.
In response Mr Beaumont said that SEL would have access for safety concerns and was within his rights to restrict access if there was the threat of disconnection.
‘He [Mr Witney-Price] has told me he will disconnect me and listed his reasons which unsurprisingly I don’t agree with,’ he said. ‘I don’t recognise his complaints. This restriction is just for the purpose of disconnecting supply – anything else is fine.’
‘Disconnection would have implications for everyone who lives on Sark, without water purification or heating it would leave people having to leave the island.’
Mr Beaumont said Mr Witney-Price was treating the utility company as if it were a simple shop.
‘Its akin to him refusing to serve people – a utility company cannot do that. He seems to be suggesting there is an alternative supplier and is being unreasonable on every level.
‘If he wants to disconnect, he needs to take it through the courts.’
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