In June it was reported that a hospitality group had made contact with Ports of Jersey to propose the idea, but now it has emerged that there is even more interest in the site, which sits across the road from the Weighbridge and next to the Maritime Museum.
Doug Bannister, who this week announced that he is to stand down as chief executive of Ports of Jersey at the end of the year, said no decisions had yet been made about the future of the site.
However, he confirmed that as the land was now in Ports of Jersey’s ownership, having been given to the organisation in 2016, it would be up to the business to decide what to do with it, not the States.
Any planning application would, however, go through the normal routes involving politicians, either the Environment Minister or the Planning Committee, which has delegated responsibility from the minister to make decisions about some applications.
Mr Bannister said: ‘Three different hotel groups are interested in the site. We haven’t made up our mind about what to do with it.
‘No matter what it is we want to do, there are people that will think it [our choice] is the best decision and there are people that will think it is devastating.
‘It [the Steam Clock] is a massive topic among some people and the site itself is sensitive. And we need to be conscious of those sensitivities when it becomes time and that is fully on our minds.’
And he repeated assurances made in the past that the clock, which was commissioned by the Waterfront Enterprise Board in 1996 but has not worked for a number of years, would be kept secure and that the area would remain safe in the meantime. But he added there was currently no money to refurbish the device.
Meanwhile, Mr Bannister said that progress was finally starting to be made between Ports of Jersey and CICRA, the competition regulator that has so far refused to agree to let Ports increase its fees in the first uprate since a below-inflation rise in 2016.
He described agreeing a long-term mechanism for fair increases with CICRA as the ‘biggest’ challenge facing Ports of Jersey going forward.
‘Trying to come up with a mechanism with CICRA that allows us to recover the increases in costs to our operation mainly from inflation and increased regulatory burden – that is an important thing,’ he said.
Mr Bannister – who has previously said Ports is losing out on £1 million in revenue a year because of the issue with CICRA – said that Ports had been working with the regulator on the matter for three years but had not found the right ‘recipe’.
However, he added that headway now appeared to be being made.
‘Recently we have been making excellent progress in our joint working with CICRA and we are hopefully on the right path,’ he said.
