By Ben Shenton
I THINK everyone would have more respect for government if they did not have such a “do as I say, not as I do” mentality. That said, the vast majority who work in government in Jersey who I have direct contact with are the salt of the earth – really nice dedicated individuals – so it is obviously only a few bad apples who are the problem.
It is amazing how much damage a person can do when they abuse a position of power that they neither deserve nor have the intelligence to understand.
I’ll give you an example of this “do as I say” mentality that will please every single landlord in the Island (they are due some good news). It shows how the government acts as landlord, which is very different to the way they expect the public to act.
The premise you have to accept is that the government sets the laws, and therefore should act legally at all times. The other premise is that how the government operates should set a precedent for the people, a benchmark. Therefore, logic would suggest that if the people operate in the same manner as the government/public servants then no breach of the law can be committed.
The good news for landlords is twofold. The first is that if you own a property that needs expensive repairs or maintenance, your expenditure can be limited by the budget you give yourself to undertake those repairs, and you can set this budget substantially below the realistic cost.
The second piece of good news is that you can put into the lease a clause that maintenance and repairs will only be undertaken if it is within your arbitrary budget you set yourself. The budget does not have to have any correlation with your own wealth, you can simply say “I cannot do the repairs as they are not within my budget” and jet off to Monaco or elsewhere for lunch.
These “precedents” have been set not by me but by the Government of Jersey. The government uses the former argument to allow properties under its ownership to fall into disrepair, and the latter argument allows them to continue to act as bad landlords. I think any landlord taken to court could argue that they are merely following government policy, albeit thankfully I am not a lawyer.
Obviously, articles of this nature need to be evidence-based.
The Havre des Pas bathing pool and building are enjoyed by thousands of swimmers and the building is an iconic piece of architecture. It was saved and restored many years ago by my late father, Senator Dick Shenton, using the resources of the Tourism Development Fund. I pay my taxes so that it can be kept in pristine condition and be a free facility for the general public – who will swim, stay healthy and ultimately save the taxpayer millions.
I think the public would be almost unanimous in agreeing that the government are hopeless at maintaining this, and most other buildings in their ownership. Jersey Property Holdings is merely the arrangement under which the Government of Jersey holds its properties, so for clarity I will refer to them as “the government”. The Havre des Pas bathing pool and buildings are maintained by the government.
Under a Freedom of Information response, the government makes it quite clear how we should treat their obligations as landlord.
“Critically this water ingress (in the main) was not the result of high tides/storm surges but rainwater. From my site visit seeing the cracks on the roof and stairs I would support that assertion and this is also referenced by Currie & Brown when they did their report.” The government “have said to them that there was no budget for this repair work. There was no agreed maintenance programme and in fact states that there has been no substantial or effective repair of the roof at all”.
The government, as landlord, said that they had “no budget” and the tenant would just have to put up with sub-standard conditions. Of course, the government has the money. However, if it is not within this budget due to incompetence or dishonesty of those who set the budget, as landlord they don’t have to do the work, a useful precedent for private-sector landlords.
The second useful precedent set by the government in this case was the revelation that the government “clearly have a limited budget for any maintenance hence why in their proposed new lease they put a clause in that any maintenance has to be subject to funds being available”.
So, I assume that private-sector landlords can follow suit and tell their tenants that any maintenance has to be subject to funds being available in a budget drawn up by the landlord.
Of course, the government don’t have a “limited budget”, this is nonsense as the budget is just an arbitrary figure they have set themselves, and they have an obligation to do the work.
When it comes spending money on “woke” policies and “pipe dreams”, our government seems able to find the money to waste. When it comes to providing free facilities for the public and maintaining much-loved heritage assets, the message appears to be “that’s not what we are here for”.
The truth is that this is exactly what they are here for, and the public are getting fed up with this over-regulated, power mad, unproductive, unethical “do as I say, not as I do” behaviour.
Those who worked for the government used to be called public servants, but in Jersey it is the public that are the servants. If a government has a legal obligation, they cannot continuously remove that obligation by hiding behind the arbitrary and meaningless budgets they set themselves.
And if we believe that premise then a whole can of worms gets opened and the public regains a fairer, more equal, relationship with a government that is forced to abide by the standards it sets the public.
