In a submission to Scrutiny, the organisation’s chairman, Tim Brown, called on the government to find the money to repair crumbling parts of the castle – what it calls ‘the most significant public heritage asset in St Helier’ – after an apparent error calculating the heritage budget resulted in £3.7 million being cut.
Jersey Heritage has now lodged a planning application for two key areas of the castle – the hospital block and the officers’ quarters – in spite of the fact that it currently has no funds for the projects.
Mr Brown says Jersey Heritage were ‘surprised and disappointed, if not embarrassed’ to learn that funding identified in the 2020–2023 Government Plan last year had been cut because of what they were told had been an error in the budget calculations.
‘Elizabeth Castle seems to have gone from being included twice to being excluded altogether,’ Mr Brown says in his letter to the Economic and International Affairs Scrutiny Panel.
In a submission charting the 40-year history of plans to restore parts of Elizabeth Castle, Mr Brown said that while they welcomed the additional funding in the latest Government Plan – following last year’s States decision to raise funding for culture to 1% of the total States budget – ‘a huge amount of money has come out of the allocation. The main loser here seems to be heritage in general but plans for Elizabeth Castle in particular,’ he said.
According to the submission, plans were first put to the States in 1980 to refurbish the castle’s hospital and officers’ quarters – both areas which would support development of the site as a visitor attraction.
However, funding has never been identified for the conservation and restoration work in spite of an agreement in 1996 between the government and Jersey Heritage, one of the objectives of which was ‘to preserve the historical and archaeological integrity of the site’.
‘Our concern remains that consequently, 40 years after the need was recognised by the Assembly, there is no plan or, to put it another way, in effect a plan never to invest in this building, the most significant public heritage asset in St Helier and one of the Island’s most important visitor attractions’, Mr Brown said.
Jersey Heritage was responding to an invitation from the Economic and International Affairs Scrutiny Panel to comment on the funding allocation for culture in the Government Plan. Its submission focuses entirely on the need to support investment in Elizabeth Castle which it says ‘could form part of a great facility for locals and would attract visitors from across the UK and Europe’.
