Commons' future not decided

That the council is charged with managing the Vale Commons for the benefit of all islanders is beyond doubt.

That it is able to raise money by levying charges for sporting and other activities is also well settled. (Sections 4 and 12, Ordinance XI 1932).

As I am sure you understand, neither the council nor the working party is anti-golfer nor, indeed, anti-anybody else who wishes to legitimately enjoy the commons.

In the newsletter the council recently circulated to all habitants, mention was made of the need for an over-arching environmental plan and for there to be modern management agreements between the council and those organisations wishing to make use of the commons for sporting activities. Starved of cash and other resources, as it has historically been, it is little wonder that the council has been very restricted in what it could do in terms of the environmental management of the commons beyond 'holding the line'.

The present newsletter and the debate it has generated points to the fact that such plans are now very much in train.

The proposed organisation, 'The Friends of the Commons', will be open to all and will, hopefully, bring added value to that ongoing debate.

This is an opportunity for anyone who has a genuine interest in the overall care and wellbeing of the commons to play a part in that.

Your mention of a dust-up between the council and the golfers is perhaps putting an emphasis on our discussions which may not reflect the true position. The first point to grasp is that when the present lease ends, after 70 years at a fixed rate of £100 per annum, nobody has any right to require that a new lease be granted to them. In reaching a conclusion as to what might be in the best long-term interests of all islanders, it was necessary to weigh the fact that the 1,500 or so members of two private golf clubs who have enjoyed all but exclusive use of one half of the commons for nearly 70 years will have nowhere else to go if golf ceases to be played on the Commons after 2016. It is felt reasonable to give them a period of time (25 years), to consider their possible alternatives, should they then be required.

It is also essential that the council avoids locking its successors into anything like the position the present council inherited from its predecessors (an inflation-proof lease of 70 years' duration).

A number of options now present themselves.

Does the playing of golf end in 2016?

If not, should it continue as the preserve of two private clubs with, between them, about 1,500 members? Might it, after 70 years, become a municipal course, open to the existing golfers and everyone else, as the States originally decided in the Resolution they passed on 19 March 1947? In which case, would there, or would there not, be a place for some involvement on the part of the States?

Or does the playing of golf continue, but on a reduced scale of, say, nine holes, thus freeing up something like three-quarters of the whole of the commons to other islanders?

Each option has the usual points 'for' and 'against' but, in making the recommendations it has, the council, with the full support of the working party, has suggested that, in the way of any good Guernsey compromise, the present golf clubs be offered a further term of 25 years, at a rent which broadly equates to one half of the future funding needs of the commons. That would cost each of the 1,500 or so members something less than £1.20 per week. Now, I know that is a hike from 8p per golfer per year but, when compared with a monthly membership of Beau Sejour, or the cost of keeping a modest boat in the marinas, it still doesn't amount to very much.

You will have noted that the golf clubs would far rather continue as a sub-tenant of the States of Guernsey, which became involved in 1947 by virtue of its loan for creating a municipal golf course. From what Deputy O'Hara has been saying recently, he might see himself, and perhaps his department, as an 'honest broker' attempting to forge an agreement by which the present golf clubs would continue their exclusive use of the golf course on the commons. To the working party, that translates into a search for something longer than 25 years, but at a rent which is substantially less than that required to support one half of the commons in the future.

Our question to the membership of the two clubs would therefore be, 'Do you really think that is right?' Of course, it is accepted that club members already pay a considerable sum to maintain the present golf course, but for whose benefit is that? Is it any different from the boat owner who has to buy, maintain and insure their boat in the marina?

And, finally, is the annual cost of £60 to each golf club member at all excessive, given that if a non-member of these two clubs came along and asked to play a round of golf tomorrow, the charge for that privilege would be £55?

JURAT MICHAEL TANGUY,

Chairman,

Vale Commons Working Party.