On the slow track to nowhere
IT COMES as no surprise to see a senior politician predict that there will be no progress on harbour redevelopment until 2030 at the earliest.
Whether States’ Trading Supervisory Board president Peter Roffey – the latest to express doubt about progress on the ports – ever thought that his own committee’s ambitious proposals, revealed in summer 2021 and costed in the region of £360m., were ever going to work, he surely doesn’t believe in the new structure now.
STSB’s thorough and ‘ambitious’ proposals for extensive east coast redevelopment were kicked into the long grass two years ago with the establishment of the agency, which, although it will be populated with directors in the next few weeks, we expect to go nowhere for the next few years.
But as STSB now outlines, it’s not just the future that is being damaged by the lack of vision for the ports, but also the present day. The board can’t agree long-term leases at the harbour because of an uncertain future. It doesn’t know what the next move might be on inert waste, and the implications for the east coast that might have.
It’s the kind of scenario planning and long-term thinking which often see the States at its worst.
Although Policy & Resources seeks to reassure us that the project remains ‘on track’ it only seems to be on a slow track to nowhere.