A PROJECT to examine the feasibility of building a wind farm in Jersey’s territorial waters could be carried out hand-in-glove by the government and Scrutiny, Environment Minister Steve Luce has suggested.
Earlier this week the States decided that detailed work should be undertaken to determine whether the option – endorsed by the majority of Islanders responding to a public consultation – should be explored in more detail, and a dedicated Scrutiny panel will be established as part of the process.
Deputy Luce, a former Scrutiny panel chairman himself, has suggested that this affords the opportunity for a collaborative approach.
“I’d be really keen – and I know [Economic Development Minister] Kirsten [Morel] would be as well – not to say to Scrutiny: ‘here’s an option, what do you think?’ But to sit down with them and say ‘let’s have a chat about it’.
“I don’t want to be presenting it to Scrutiny: I’d be much happier working with them as we develop it, so that all the questions they may have had, have been asked along the way.
“I want to get to the end so that they can stand up – a bit like they did [in this week’s debate] – and say ‘this is good, we’ve worked with the minister all the way along’.
“Some people may not like that approach and say: ‘no, government have got to come forward with the proposals and Scrutiny’s job is to scrutinise those proposals’.
“We’ll have that debate [but] I’ve always taken the view that Scrutiny is there to help, not necessarily to hinder. I’ve never seen it as government and opposition. I’ve always wanted to do my best to help whichever minister I was scrutinising to make something better and, if I couldn’t, I’d say: ‘that looks fine to me’. That’s always been my view and I’d like to think we’ve had some reasonable success with that.
“Hopefully, now I’m on the other side of the fence, I can have the same sort of rapport with my Scrutiny panel. We’ll see,” he said.
During the course of the next six weeks a timetable for the work will be produced, and the minister suggested he could be ready by the end of the year to return to the States with draft legislation that would allow a developer to use the publicly-owned seabed for a wind farm. It would be the prelude to a detailed report on the feasibility of the project.
