By John Henwood
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Fort Regent – here we go again
ONE cannot blame Infrastructure Minister Andy Jehan for passing off much of the responsibility for Fort Regent to the Jersey Development Company (JDC). After all, who would want such a political hot potato? Accountability for the Fort has passed from hand to hand for a long time, indeed since the Sport, Leisure & Recreation Committee under the presidency of Terry Le Main decided to set aside the leisure and recreation bits of the role in favour of turning it into a sports centre. Out went the wet-weather entertainment, the dancing fountains, vivarium, the night club and shops, in other words all the reasons to go there if you were not a sports enthusiast. So, people stopped going. Of course, swimming is both sport and recreation, but the Fort’s pool, opened in 1971, closed in 2009 when it was deemed too expensive to replace the worn-out plant. Perhaps another example of failure adequately to maintain a public asset as the pumps, filters, valves and extensive pipework became too badly dilapidated to be fixed.
There is a story, which is probably impossible to verify, about the circumstances around the decision to close the pool. A specialist was called in to assess the cost of replacing the plant. There may have been additional tidying up to do, but the main expense would be in changing over the worn-out plant. After due time and consideration, a report was presented to the Fort’s management putting the cost at half a million pounds.
At this time, to ensure we would not be without a town pool if Fort Regent’s had to close, talks had begun around an alternative on the Waterfront. Remember, the Waterfront was in the hands of the Waterfront Enterprise Board, which would eventually be subsumed into the JDC. It seems there was some political appetite around a new pool in a prime waterfront site, but how could it be justified while the Fort’s pool existed?
When it came to a final decision, the report of the consultant brought in to calculate the cost of replacing the plant was laid before the committee, but now an extra nought had been added to the cost. Half a million had become five million. Who was responsible for the change we shall never know, but the grossly inflated figure made it easy to decide that the Fort Regent pool was beyond economic repair. And so, we lost a valuable public asset in favour of what became a financial millstone – Aquasplash. The company which runs Aquasplash has an iron-clad contract with our government that says any losses incurred in running the pool are paid for out of the public purse. We had been subsidising it to the tune of around half a million pounds a year. Between 2010 and the beginning of last year the subsidy had totalled £5.6 million. A small reduction in the subsidy has since been negotiated.
As for the future of the Fort, it is not easy to have confidence in the JDC coming up with a plan that is acceptable and affordable. I recall being invited some years ago (former Deputy Eddie Noel was Infrastructure Minister at the time) to a presentation of a plan for the Fort which had been developed by JDC at substantial cost. It was an extraordinary proposal involving all manner of exciting wonders including a huge glass platform extending over the parapet. It is gathering dust somewhere along with the innumerable other plans. Perhaps the JDC will just blow the dust from that. It would certainly be cheaper than starting all over again. Meanwhile, day by day the Fort, built in 1806 to keep Napoleon out, is becoming more and more derelict and ever more expensive to do anything meaningful with.
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Non, Monsieur le Deputy
It is a little worrying. Twice recently I have found myself in agreement with a Reform Jersey States Member. On the second occasion, a minister, Deputy Rob Ward, Minister for Education and Lifelong Learning, has indicated implacable opposition to Deputy Sir Philip Bailhache’s Proposition (P.45 2024) that three English-French bilingual primary schools should be introduced starting next year. His rebuttal of Deputy Bailhache’s proposal seemed unduly dismissive but, on the principle, I think he is right.
The proposal did not come as a huge surprise. Deputy Bailhache is an ardent Francophile and, over the years, has taken opportunities to promote the French language and our historic links with France. I recall his strong support for the renaming of our streets into French. Does anyone refer to the Rue des Trois Pigeons or will it always be Hill Street to us? He had support from the Constable of St Helier, who was behind renaming James Street Rue de Funchal. How odd, using French to name a street after the Madeiran capital, surely it should have been Rua do Funchal or, better still, Funchal Street.
The empires of all the great European colonialists fell in time and countries claiming French as their sole official language are mostly to be found among France’s former African possessions. There are ex-colonial outposts such as Mali, Togo and Benin, but many other former possessions have demoted the language to co-official and adopted English. Canada is by far the most significant example of a co-official language country, but I have travelled it extensively and never met a native who was not a fluent English speaker.
Here is my point: if children want to succeed in the world of today and tomorrow, the languages that will be most useful are English, Spanish – and possibly Mandarin. I am probably not as bright as Deputy Bailhache, I only passed French at O-level against his A-level, but I have never found that to be to my detriment, whereas Spanish would have been very useful travelling the Americas, including the United States. Creating bilingual English/French schools would be unduly disruptive and expensive to no long-term benefit. I get the cultural heritage bit, my grandmothers’ maiden names were Le Marquand and De La Haye, so there’s French ancestry in my blood, but I would not consider that a good enough reason to support the promotion in schools of a diminishing foreign language.
So, while recognising Deputy Bailhache’s devotion to the French language and his desire to share it, I hope his proposition does not find sufficient support in the Assembly.
Doubtless the issue of Jersey Norman French will come up when the matter is eventually debated, but it is a red herring. Surely no one is crazy enough to suggest it should be a compulsory part of the school curriculum, much less a cause for bilingual schools, but I can understand the case for ensuring, as far as possible, that the language is preserved, if only through a very small number of passionate individuals.
