Grouville facing £5,000 fine for Centenier vacancies

Thursday 24 December 2020

The Parish of Grouville is pleading for new Centenier candidates to come forward, as it faces a fine of up to £5,000 if it does not find two new ones by March.

Constable John Le Maistre told Express that the Parish had been presented with a court order on 11 December fixing a deadline to find candidates.

In the order, it was stated that the Court had fixed March 17 as the date for the election, with the Parish obliged to have the Centeniers for swearing in on March 19 “on pain of contempt.”

Constable Le Maistre explained that the Parish had been struggling to find nominees across the whole of this year: “One of the positions became vacant last February - we’ve had three dates set to have elections and nobody’s come forward," he said.

Pictured: Though the Parish managed to recruit four other positions early in the year, they are still on the lookout for Centeniers.

“Then we had somebody retire in December, so we now have two positions. Obviously when we reported to court and we didn’t have any last Friday, they said it’s extremely important the Parish have a full crew of Centeniers.”

There is a precedent for parishes being fined for a shortage of Centeniers – in 2002, St John was fined £5,000 was not finding one in time, and in 2015, the same amount was imposed on St Saviour.

Earlier this year, an island-wide recruitment drive for new Honorary Officers in all parishes was carried out, to try and reach a full force of 311 officers across all 12 parishes.

WATCH: An island-wide initiative to recruit Honorary Officers was launched early this year.

Though the Constable remarked that the campaign was “very successful for the lower ranks,” filling four posts, it did not fill up the Centenier positions that desperately need taking now.

He encouraged anyone interested to either phone him or come to the Parish Hall for a discussion.