Paying one way or another
ASK any islander if they want to stop a £6m. annual ‘bail out’ from the public purse and you’ll get an affirmative answer.
Except when the proposal to take an early step to do so is to increase car parking charges at the airport.
Welcome to the new normal of government in Guernsey, where user charges are kept artificially low and not increased year-on-year – the new proposed increase is the first for five years – and then there’s hell to pay when they rise, even though the comparison with UK airports is still startlingly different.
Time to brace ourselves for much more of this kind of thing.
The reality is most States trading entities, and certainly the ports, are operating in the red, and are being bailed out by the taxpayer. The non-travelling, or non-boat-owning taxpayer, is supporting these services for the user.
Taken in isolation, the ports should not need an annual bail out – bar exceptional circumstances, such as Covid – unless government wants to make a strategic decision to use them as an economic enabler.
But everyone gets caught in this awkward position where the ports have no chance of washing their own face while charges are out of whack. The frustration comes when costs just continue to outstrip income, and the default solution is to increase charges, rather than seek efficiencies.