This expensive fight to make St Helier exempt from paying the proposed waste charge, despite the fact that, currently, it would only be levied on companies, seemingly ignores the fact that waste removal costs money and someone has to pay.
Constable Simon Crowcroft has led the fight on behalf of his parishioners but made it quite clear where accountability for the £750,000 lies – not with him but with the St Helier Parish Assembly. ‘I will take this fight further. But I need the Assembly’s backing because two years down the line, if we are faced with a £750,000 legal bill, I don’t want people saying it is the Constable’s fault,’ he said.
So that’s clear, then. Accountability lies with the 56 parishioners who turned up and voted to continue the fight and it has nothing to do with the parish Constable when it goes wrong.
Parish versus Island battles rarely come out well for either party. Take the St Helier vs Council of Ministers fight in respect of the Island paying parish rates on States properties. According to the Medium Term Financial Plan, the additional cost to the Island is £900,000 – St Helier being the main beneficiary at £611,000, with St Saviour (£153,000) and St Brelade (£67,000) the other major beneficiaries.
As stated above, someone has to pay and the funding to pay rates on States properties has to be found from somewhere. With the taxation system placing an increasing burden on individuals due to zero-ten, the Council of Ministers quite rightly has said these funds should be raised from companies. According to the MTFP, the preferred route is through a ‘non-domestic Islandwide rate’.
This makes sense and, given the state of current finances, a contribution from UK high street businesses which do not pay income tax is a sensible one. Indeed, this could be a useful revenue stream to reduce the tax burden on individuals.
Ironically, as most businesses are located in town, St Helier would be the largest contributor to a new tax implemented as a direct result of its representatives seeking to reduce the tax burden. Just don’t blame the Constable when the bill arrives.
