Time to sweat the small stuff
WHO would have thought that a government could be embarrassed by the relatively minor issue of the steps up to the Cow's Horn?
In his first major speech to the States as president of Policy & Resources, two-and-a-half years ago, Deputy Peter Ferbrache said quite a lot, including references to capital expenditure, which may come back to haunt him and his committee.
Three months on from November 2020 there was going to be a list of ‘practical capital projects that could be advanced in early course’.
Then P&R would draw up a capital programme. Hopefully some issues would be accelerated – including Havelet slip, Fermain wall and the Cow’s Horn steps. Relatively minor projects, which, dealt with adroitly, would have served as ‘poster’ projects for a government committed to action.
Of those just Havelet has been completed, with Fermain, which collapsed in 2014, reaching tender stage by 2021, while the funding for the Cow’s Horn was approved earlier this year, nearly three years after it collapsed. 18 months ago Deputy Ferbrache was admitting: ‘Progress has been nowhere near as much as I would have liked.’
Now progress on capital projects is front and centre of States considerations, islanders might ponder, if we can’t sweat the small stuff, what price actually delivering on the big-ticket projects?