Where there’s a will...
Where there’s a will, there’s a way, so the old adage goes. That rings true, particularly if you’re ready for compromise, conciliation and a result.
So seems the first big effort made by the new-look Policy & Resources Committee, which has pulled together a remarkable hotch-potch of good fortune, creative mathematics and what appears to be a refusal to countenance failure, to create a new proposal to fund the Les Ozouets development, a project which was heading inexorably for the de-funded scrapheap under previous leadership.
There must be a very high chance that it will get through the States – possibly as early as this week – though it’s made up of a remarkable set of convenient opportunities.
Removing sports facilities from the build was always a predictable, if disappointing, economy, but now we have an £88m. project at Les Ozouets, funded by a combination of savings and seemingly newly-affordable borrowing, with an extra million included just to get the groundworks under way as a statement of intent for the soon-to-follow Sixth Form Centre.
One other point of interest from this modern political miracle is that the days of any kind of ‘cheap’ construction are over. When finding savings to take the cost ‘down’ to £88m. is hailed as some kind of triumph, it’s actually another throwback to the tales of doom from the previous P&R about the long-term affordability of running Guernsey.