THE Royal Court has ordered that the government must stabilise a coastal bank at Fliquet within the next 12 months so the parish of St Martin can repair the cracked lane above.
The court’s judgment – made during the first of its two Visite Royales this summer – potentially ends a decade of toing and froing between the north-eastern parish and Jersey Property Holdings, which has responsibility for publicly owned land.
However, the court also gave the government a three-month window to go to the court to apply for its order to be varied or discharged.
The dispute was one of two that St Martin asked the court – led by the Bailiff with an entourage of Jurats – to deliberate on during its morning tour of the parish.
The Visite Royale provides an opportunity for the court to leave the precincts of the States Building and, more often than not, escape to the sun-blessed country.
The roadshow – complete with a snaking cavalcade of stretched limos, minibuses and police cars – is a quirky ceremony with a certain degree of pomp and a barrowload of tradition.
It always begins with a full session of the Royal Court in the respective parish hall (although in St Martin’s unique case, its public hall) where the court inspects the parish accounts and hears reports from the Constable, Roads Inspectors and Chef de Police.
Then, after a cup of tea, everyone piles into their respective vehicles to visit two or three locations of contention in the parish, usually an unresolved land dispute.
The first case – just a five-minute drive from the public hall – was in Rue de la Solitude, a picturesque lane which wends its way down towards St Catherine.
The issue: parking is already prohibited along most of it but the parish understood that its only option to show this was to paint yellow lines – something that it thought would ruin the lane’s bucolic appeal.
After hearing legal opinion from newly sworn-in Solicitor General Victoria Bell and Advocate Michael Ogilvy Watson, the court decreed that while it could not make any instant order, it could recommend that the Infrastructure Minister, who has power over the enforcement of road signs, allows that a notice be erected marking the start of the ‘no waiting’ zone and another at its end. Problem solved, one hopes.
The second stop, via a vehicular procession to Gorey and along the coast road, was to Fliquet, where the court ruled in favour of the road’s stabilisation, which was greeted with welcome nods and smiles by parish officials, no doubt pleased that this particular saga appeared to be over.
And with that – as is tradition – the Royal Court, accompanied by the parish rector, went for lunch in Gorey, while the municipality went to another restaurant not that far away.
It was an affable and jovial occasion in glorious weather, with fine views over Les Ecréhous and the French coast at both stops, while buzzards circled overhead.
As the Bailiff, Robert MacRae, noted at the Visite Royale’s conclusion: “Last night, Jersey won a gold medal in the swimming pool at the Commonwealth Games; if Visite Royales gave out medals, St Martin’s would also be gold.”
However, it was not all speeches, ritual or pleasantries, with the good nature of the court dependent on the parish presenting a set of well-managed accounts, which St Martin appeared to do with some aplomb.
And when it comes to the instant justice dispensed in the corner of a field or by a picturesque bay, the parish may be smiling but planners in the Infrastructure Department now have to rearrange their works’ schedules and budgets to fix the collapsing Fliquet bank, or at least mount a legal challenge to argue otherwise.
The Visite Royale may remain a quirky annual outing but the occasion has not lost its teeth.
The second and final Visite Royale of the year takes place in St Lawrence on Wednesday 19 August.
