Parish vow legal fight against £10 million waste charge

Wednesday 10 February 2016

A legal battle over whether the States can charge Islanders £10 million per year to dispose of waste is heading to court in August.

St Helier Constable Simon Crowcroft has vowed to fight a move by the Infrastructure department (formerly known as TTS) to set aside a legal agreement from 1952 that prevents the States charging St Helier residents for the disposal of waste.

The sale of the Bellozanne site by the Parish of St Helier to the States for the old incinerator included a clause that the States could never charge St Helier residents for waste disposal.

But now, with a £10 million user-pays waste charge forming part of the plan to fill the £145 million deficit expected by 2019, the Infrastructure department wants to set that clause aside to get the charge set up.

If evenly divided between all Island households, the charge per home would be £223 per year.

“The Parish is going to fight it,” said Mr Crowcroft, who says that he has instructed lawyers to contest the move after being served with court papers by the Viscount’s department.

“I am bound to be concerned that the initial letter from the minister came shortly before Christmas and gave a response date of 8 January – for a substantive response.

“It is a concern that we are supposed to provide a substantive defence over the Christmas period. We did respond by the deadline, and we will now be preparing our legal arguments for honouring the covenant for a court appearance which has been tabled for 7 August.”

The position of the Infrastructure department is made more complicated by the fact that as recently as 2005 they admitted that they had been advised that the legal agreement was binding.

In the Solid Waste Strategy from 2005, they wrote: “The legal advice to the Committee is that it is implicit in this obligation to accept the refuse free of charge.

“The Committee has made preliminary investigations into the options for resolving this situation, and will negotiate with the Parish of St Helier to find a satisfactory way forward.”