If Chief Pleas were to abandon its compulsory purchase of SEL – the company’s owner said he will immediately remove the additional legal levies he is charging customers.
Alan Witney-Price has also said he has another interested buyer who will step in if Chief Pleas drops its plans to buy Sark Electricity Limited.
Mr Witney-Price has responded to comments made by the independent Electricity Price Commissioner, who last week said the two legal levies added to all electricity bills in Sark from 1 September were “very clearly, neither fair nor reasonable”.
Shane Lynch published his ‘preliminary conclusions’ following a hastily arranged investigation into the two levies that were announced last month.
The first ‘legal levy’ was a 40p per unit charge that Sark Electricity Limited said would be held by a third party to be used to fight Chief Pleas’ planned compulsory purchase of the company.
SEL said it would accrue money through the 20p per unit charge to challenge the result of the EPC’s investigation.
Mr Lynch said he does not have the legal power to make a price control order forcing SEL’s owner to remove the levies immediately, and that instead he would be following a statutory process which could see a price control order imposed from the beginning of October instead.
Mr Witney-Price has since said the EPC was acting “ultra vires” and that he had “improperly progressed with his determination before receiving our responses to his questions issued to the company dated 28th August”.
“Our Advocate wrote to Mr Lynch on 29th August advising him that his demand for a response to his questions under a section 5 notice “within 2 working days was plainly unreasonable and certainly unachievable” given that the Commissioner was already aware, from our joint Court hearing of 22nd August in the matter of Sark Electricity Limited v. The Sark Electricity Price Control Commissioner, that the Director was not in the Country; a subject covered at length between the Court and the EPC. In fact, the Director did not have immediate access to any of the information that the EPC requested; nor would SEL have been able to avail itself of the proper legal advice to allow the information to be provided in the deadline provided. Facts of which the EPC was fully aware,” wrote Mr Witney-Price.
Mr Witney-Price asked Express to make it clear to customers that all of this legal action would stop immediately if Chief Pleas were to drop its compulsory purchase plans.
“I would further ask Bailiwick Express to make it clear to Sark residents that if Chief Pleas abandoned its compulsory purchase strategy, which it cannot afford anyway, and the price commissioner abandoned his latest price review, that both of these levies would vanish immediately. This would leave the price below that charged in Alderney. An island with four times as many residents and greater economies of scale.”
If Chief Pleas were to drop the compulsory purchase plans, Mr Witney-Price intends to sell the company to a third party – which is not currently linked with Sark.
The prospective buyer was previously linked with a purchase but that fell through, which Mr Witney-Price blamed on Chief Pleas at the time.
“Island Power have made it clear to Chief Pleas again in recent days that they are still interested in pursuing their acquisition of SEL, at the agreed price of £2.4m, which would ultimately place the asset in the hands of residents and give Chief Pleas a veto right,” he wrote.
He added: “SEL genuinely believes that residents should not have been forced to fund such an abuse of the public purse by, some, local politicians. We do however, believe that these politicians should be held to account. That however is a matter for Chief Pleas. Sadly with such, we allege, deep rooted corruption you are currently asking the turkeys to vote for Christmas. So many senior individuals are captured within this correspondence that we believe it is only the involvement of the MoJ itself that could clear this mess up. In the meantime we have offered to reimburse tax payers from the sale proceeds of SEL to Island Power. With everything that is on the table, why Chief Pleas continues to pursue this policy of compulsory purchase and force such significant levies on Sark residents is unfathomable.”
Express understands that Chief Pleas intends to pursue the compulsory purchase regardless.
It’s expected that an independent valuer could be appointed within weeks – by a court, if it cannot be agreed between Chief Pleas and SEL.
Sark’s government has also told SEL that it won’t be paying either of the additional legal levies on any bill for any island owned property.
This includes additional charges levied against electricity used at the island’s medical centre, ambulance shed, harbours, school, abattoir, sewage plant, and more.
Chief Pleas has also said it will resist any attempt by Sark Electricity Limited to disconnect its supplies or to put in pre-payment meters at any of the island owned sites.