La Collette ‘landscaping’ costs nearly £660K

Thursday 13 October 2016

Trying to disguise a massive grey box on the coast isn't easy - but new figures show it's also expensive, with the cost of ‘landscaping’ the 'energy from waste' plant at La Collette in 2015 coming in at a whopping £658,973.

The cost is revealed in the answer to a question posed by Deputy Mike Higgins - a breakdown of the bill shows that landscaping cost £383,000, while labour came to over £90,000. The total bill included other costs such as engineers and surveyors fees.

Infrastructure Minister Eddie Noel said the cost was justified as La Collette was a huge building, measuring around 30 metres in height and approximately 150 metres in length. 

He said: “It is not like landscaping a garden, this was a massive job and it was done to try and make the area look better, but we are talking about a building which is 30 metres high and that makes it very difficult to hide. 

“Included in the cost has been the planting of 2,000 trees which are around two metres tall at the moment. The environment was too harsh to plant mature trees, so we are just going to have to wait to let nature take its course for the trees to continue to grow.    

“These costs have been planned for some time and they are a suitable use of money in order to try and landscape the area, so that it looks better for everyone who lives and works in Jersey.”