Rates? States should pay rent too!

Tuesday 06 December 2016

States departments may have to pay rent in the future in a bid to make them control more closely what they are spending.

At a meeting of the Corporate Services Scrutiny Panel, Senator Sarah Ferguson challenged the Island's Treasury Minister on why more hadn't been done since the issue was identified in 2010. Without paying rent, she described States Department as having little incentive to reduce the space they occupied.

Currently the States occupy multiple sites across the Island, to provide space for their 8,000 public sector employees. There are proposals to build a new States' headquarters on La Motte street to try and bring States departments together, in a purpose-built office, which would be intended to save taxpayers' money. 

Senator Maclean agreed that making the States pay rent was an issue which needed to be tackled, and suggested his department would now do something about it:

"You are right, and I have sat here and agreed with the principle that that is exactly what we should be moving to. We don't yet have a funding source, and we will work on that now that some other priorities have been dealt with. There have been significant other priorities which have come forward, due to the global crisis, which have been a greater priority and we have had to prioritise. That's not to say its not important, it is, but we've had to give way on this one to deal with other priorities.

"If you include all costs that you would typically see in a private business into government as well, then it would certainly focus attention on the best use of space, budgets etc. The difficulty would be transitioning. You have to consider the unintended consequences - any changes of this magnitude have to be done over a period of time. It's not got a huge amount of traction at the moment."

The issue arose following a question over whether the Treasury had worked out where the money would come from to pay parish rates. If Budget 2017 is passed next week, the States will be forced to pay parish rates (from 2018), which it's forecast will cost them £900,000 a year, most of which (£611,000) going to the Parish of St Helier.