One plus one equals nothing

It’s not the cost, it’s not the location, it’s not even the presence of the police – it’s that there’s two States departments involved.

Think Eurogate. Think child protection. Think school fees. Think Millennium Town Park. It’s almost a recipe: take at least two States departments, add nothing, do nothing, and watch everything break down . . .

And, true to form, faster than you can say ‘it is the policy of the States of Jersey Police not to comment on an ongoing investigation’, the whole £20m 18-month project fell apart.

And . . . whoa there, slow down. There’s a number towards the end of that last paragraph that’s interesting. Oddly, it’s not the first one. But we’ll come back to it. OK, carry on . . .

The point has been made before about what happens when two departments come together. At its root it comes down to this: the two departments have – and entirely naturally, and for all of the right reasons – two very different sets of objectives.

The Home Affairs department wanted a new police station. The Treasury department wanted it to cost as little as possible.

That’s it. That’s the whole of the tension, right there. The vague – and unconfirmed – reports suggested that an initial price had been tentatively proposed by the Home Affairs department, only to be over-ruled by the Treasury.

But whether or not that’s true, the point is that the whole drama undermines one of the central tenets of the 2005 ministerial reforms – that instead of 15 or so States departments pulling in various different directions, what you’d have is ten ministers pulling together, creating ‘joined-up government’.

And that last bit is one of the great States myths. What you’ve really got is a bunch of ten people pulling together in what mostly looks like the same direction, but only because there’s about 30 others milling around, not doing anything much at all (or, to give it its proper name, ‘Scrutiny’). That’s not the same thing as everyone pulling in the same direction, or even everyone wanting the same things.

It’s hard to know which bit of all of this is the most ridiculous: the idea of the Treasury department or Property Holdings pretending to some kind of superior knowledge and efficiency in matters pertaining to property is so silly as to be a new kind of uber-nonsense.

If they did there’d be a new police station on Green Street roundabout. And something on the site of the Fort Regent swimming pool, which is lining up for something like six years empty. And something else on the site of the old Jersey College for Girls building.

Or was the more ridiculous bit the sight of the two ministers involved – Treasury Minister Philip Ozouf and Home Affairs Minister Ian Le Marquand – shaking their heads mournfully about the whole thing, adopting a suitable regretful tone and giving it the whole can’t-be-helped-such-a-shame-let’s-move-on spiel?

Or was it, and this might even be the crux of the whole business, that second number from a few paragraphs ago?

It could be that Senator Le Marquand’s comment that the whole thing had been bubbling away for 18 months was the key to the story.

Setting up a new police station is not, we can probably assume, the same as any other office block. But 18 months? Even I can buy a flat in just a couple of months, and I can’t actually count. The idea that it might take a private company 18 months to buy something, anything, is just madness. There is no sensible reason for this to have taken so long – and regrettably, no sensible reason for the owners of the site to have stood around waiting for the States to get their act together.