Minister: “We’ll get money to sort out the Fort”

Monday 22 June 2015

After decades of delays and shelved reports, work to improve Fort Regent will finally start in the next few years.

The minister responsible for a new project to breathe life back into the site says that he expects work to start in the next couple of years, after 16 years of delays and reports gathering dust on the shelf.

Although massive capital projects such as the new hospital, a replacement for Les Quennevais School and new sewerage works are expected to gobble up most of the capital budgets, Transport Minister Eddie Noel is confident of getting some funding for Fort Regent when budgets are announced at the end of the month.

A report earlier this year put the full cost of revitalising the Fort – with a new hotel, improved access and a new pool – at anything up to £85 million.

But it’s understood that ministers want to start by just sorting out the long-standing issue of access via a life and ‘skywalk’ via Snow Hill – and that could cost anything from £7 million to £15 million.

Deputy Noel – who as TTS minister has responsibility for the States’ property portfolio – refused to discuss the figures ahead of the budgets being announced in the States’ Medium Term Financial Plan on 30 June.

Talk about refurbishing the site started in 1999 but there has been no action since, and the swimming pool building has been empty for 12 years.

But Deputy Noel said that he was confident that this Council of Ministers would be the one to finally start to deal with Fort Regent.

“We’re waiting to see what sort of funding we get,” he said.

“I am still very hopeful that we will be able to start to have some meaningful impact within the next few years.

“It is really important that we make some progress.

“One of the possible funding streams is that we could borrow, in the long-term, against the money that we’re going to get back from the Waterfront.”