Development of major projects hampered by silo mentality

Figures roll off the tongue and lose some meaning if you say it quickly enough, a few hundred thousand here, a million there, or certainly that’s what it seems happens inside the States chamber – or inside the boardrooms at Frossard House sometimes.

Policy & Resources averted a very expensive outcome from some naïve decision-making in refusing to allocate £300,000 for an environmental impact assessment for whether two small quarries in the lanes of the Vale were suitable for inert waste.

There is some logic in having a stopgap to create time for other projects to advance, but then it was lunacy to suggest this was the answer.

The States had got here only because in the heat of debate two deputies placed an amendment for one more investigation to take place alongside Longue Hougue south.

They wanted choice, to be able to weigh up the different projects in more detail, and did not trust that the committees had done a good enough job.

It mattered not how much money – and time – would be wasted.

Of course, no one in that debate really expected the quarries to be the pick of States’ Trading Assets and Environment & Infrastructure, but it appears when the cost figures were delved into a little deeper on the other choices on the table, particularly reclamation of Mont Cuet – a snip at £70m. – there was little choice.

It does no one any favours, either, that six months down the line what has always been the frontrunner at Longue Hougue now costs 40% more than the original guesstimate.

That does not help build confidence – and it does not matter how much the board tells the public they were only ever estimates. £12m. extra is a massive difference in anyone’s reckoning.

There is form for this kind of soaring bill – solid waste infrastructure, the airport runway, to name two.

Allied to all this is the inability of the States to both tie major initiatives together and to look beyond why something won’t work to actually finding solutions because it would be in the island’s best interests.

Deputies Barry Paint and Neil Inder are pressing for a phased reclamation project off St Peter Port harbour instead.

We’ve been told this was ruled out in the early stages, it did not make the shortlist, because of the disruption it would cause or that it is not a disposal solution.

Having asked what the intended use of Longue Hougue south would be, there was no answer coming back, and that is a major shortcoming.

The December report was silent on this as well.

A project at the harbour could be designed with different intentions.

Extending the restricted area, freeing up public space elsewhere, a longer berth to take passenger ships, a cruise liner berth.

Projects that would not provide value for money as standalone solutions end up looking more attractive in the round.

None of this is fresh thinking.

Since 2006, prompted by the discussions around the Little Venice Belle Greve reclamation idea, different arms of the States have been working up plans for the ‘eastern seaboard’.

Just months after the States was deciding on a solid waste solution which made it plain that there was only a decade of life at Longue Hougue, the harbour master plan was released.

We’ve also had the Guernsey Tomorrow workshops and visions that resulted from that.

Everything is out there.

But no one has joined the dots and timeframes together and it is a symptom of the silo mentality that still seeps through the States – and a lack of drive and confidence to get projects off the drawing board.

The States as a whole can grasp one-offs, so a new school, or a crematorium, a runway.

Not so a strategy that deals with your inert waste at the same time as improving the harbour, married to helping tackle traffic in Town and enhancing public areas, perhaps shifting parking away from prime space and improving marina facilities.

Remember, too, that another expensive report is already being worked on so that Guernsey can continue to import fuel safely – that is likely to be through St Sampson’s, maybe the prime solution involves the very spot of shore that could be filled in for no apparent purpose at the moment, while there are also projects on the books to protect thousands of houses around the Bridge and Halfway from the threat of the rising sea level.

The Longue Hougue south site is not a well-trodden path for the public, but looking back at Town, as in the view above, it is a small unexpected haven amid the industrial landscape at your back.

Of course, there will be those who would not trust the States to rework the seafront and harbour and not come up with a wrecking ball like Jersey did.

But any project of this type needs not only to draw in expertise from elsewhere in the island, but also on the public’s imagination and desires – that is the only way to ensure success.

Deputies Paint and Inder should be congratulated for pulling the harbour reclamation project from out of the dusty cabinet in which it had been locked.

They will have to go some way to make it a reality, though. All the mood music suggests it’s Longue Hougue south – when politicians and staff spend so much time on things they become protective of their answers and do not like being told what to do.

At the next States meeting, STSB president Peter Ferbrache will update the Assembly on where it now stands – that indicates the committee is unlikely to be returning to ask members to grant £300,000 for the EIA of the Vale quarries because in terms of speed it would already have had that policy letter written up and submitted.

It was always a half-hearted response to the amendment anyway.

We may hear that the harbour is not a solution for now and how the clock is ticking anyhow.

EIAs, planning inquiries, getting all the permissions in place and commissioning the work all takes time.

But remember that committees have been pulled in new directions before when riding trains to their preferred destinations – this is why we have waste export starting up a decade after an incinerator would have been built.

Time was an argument then for why the course should not be altered.