St. Mary Constable hopes to leave parish with full set of Procureurs

Friday 27 May 2022

The outgoing Constable of St. Mary hopes he will leave his successor with a full complement of Procureurs after some “very difficult” years of division.

John Le Bailly is stepping down as Constable after one term as ‘father of the parish’, although he previously served as Deputy of St. Mary between 2011 and 2014.

During his tenure, two sets of Procureur du Bien Public – who have responsibility for financial and legal matters in each parish – have resigned over differences of opinion with the Constable.

However, a new Procureur is due to be sworn in by the Royal Court on 10 June and Mr Le Bailly said another was “waiting in the wings”. Both will serve the remaining terms of the outgoing two volunteers until 2024.

He said: “It has been very difficult because the Procurers not only look after the finances but are important people to bounce ideas off. Unfortunately, it has been very much ‘us and them’, which has made life difficult, but I am glad that the situation will hopefully be resolved in time for the new Constable.

Mr Le Bailly said that disagreements around the appointment of a parish secretary had prompted the previous two Procurers to resign. 

Then, with their replacements, there had then been differences of opinion over the payment for CCTV cameras and around who had responsibility for roadworks following the flooding of a property. 

“I had a very distressed parishioner come to me and I sent out a contractor to make a temporary repair to the road,” said Mr Le Bailly. “However, the Roads Committee thought the matter was nothing to do with us, but basically it was. I went to see the Attorney General, who said it was prudent to fix it. Unfortunately, the Procurers took the side of the Roads Committee.” 

Following the first resignations, replacements Helen Mills and Peter Le Rossignol were sworn in as the parish’s financial guardians on 9 April and 10 September 2021 respectively to serve a three-year term of office but they wrote to the Greffe earlier this year stating their wish to resign.

Responding in February, Deputy Bailiff Robert MacRae said he was “very reluctant” to accept their resignations as they had taken an oath to discharge their duty to the parish before the Court.

He said it was important for Constables and their Procureurs to work together but added that the Court would not want “to extend indefinitely a situation that may seem impossible”.

The Court eventually accepted their resignations, but the Procurers agreed to stay in post until next month. 

In February, Mr Le Rossignol told the Court that he found it “very difficult to work with the Constable”.

On 22 June, there will be a contested election for Constable in St. Mary, with Deputy David Johnson, Mike Fennell and Mark Baker vying to be the next head of the parish.