A FORMER building material shop is due to become the home base for the town cleansing team, after the parish agreed to buy a new building.
At its annual general meeting last month, the Parish of St Helier voted to buy 30-32 Devonshire Place for £1.85 million – reaching £1.965 million with fees and stamp duty.
The building was previously home to Precision Plastics, which has since become part of Coda and moved to its premises in St John.
Head of infrastructure Silvio Alves said that the parish had spent “many years” searching for new premises for the cleansing team.
Constable of St Helier Inna Gardiner told the JEP that the cleansing team’s 28 employees currently operate “from a converted house that is no longer fit for purpose”.
The team needed to be in a central location, and small industrial buildings in the middle of town were hard to come by, she said.
After a landslide at Westmount Quarry in the 1990s, the team moved to Lempriere Street on a “temporary” basis.
The new site, said Mrs Gardiner, “would provide a modern, purpose-built operational base with improved staff welfare facilities, safer working conditions and capacity to support the service into the future as we are developing our commercial offer”.
Parishioners voted unanimously to purchase 30-32 Devonshire Place and approve a £300,000 budget for its refurbishment.
A proposition to sell 5 and 7 Lempriere Street and put the proceeds towards Devonshire Place was withdrawn.
