Some £30,000 of the parish’s £170,000 outgoings on lighting for this calendar year – including street lighting – goes to St Peter Port Christmas lights, and ratepayers expressed their concern at the amount of money spent for something that people from all parishes enjoy and that was broken in some areas of town.
‘We were told last year that that contribution was going to be a one-off for that year only because we highlighted that we felt Christmas lights were benefitting everybody on the island,’ said a ratepayer.
‘Therefore we thought it would be more appropriate for that to be shared amongst all of the parishes, and particularly if the other parishes weren’t prepared to put their hands in their pockets, then we certainly shouldn’t be covering all of them.’
This sparked a lengthy debate during a two-and-a-half-hour meeting where some ratepayers suggested that St Peter Port should not contribute to the lights and that they would not support the rate proposal put forward by parish officials – representing a 7% increase year-on-year – as a result.
Concerns were also raised that parts of the Christmas lights in the parish do not work.
‘We’re paying £30,000 a year for something that a significant amount of it doesn’t work,’ said another ratepayer.
‘We’re paying money to something which is old and needs updating. We have to be, at some point, cognisant of the fact that we probably should just pause it for a bit and try to raise money to put something different in, but constantly giving £30,000 a year or whatever for something that we know doesn’t work – you wouldn’t do that with your own money.’
Douzenier and managing director of Event Hire Shaun Broughton – which is responsible for installing the lights – said that it was the infrastructure that needed upgrading, rather than the lights themselves.
The meeting settled on something of a compromise that its £30,000 support should be specifically used on upgrading infrastructure.
The total sum proposed for street lighting was up £27,000 on the figure requested 12 months previously.
And ratepayers ultimately approved that a total of £878,279 is to be levied by means of owner’s rate, but it was not unanimous and there was some strong opposition in the room.