Environmental Panel - Quarterly Hearing - Minister for Transport and Technical Services - 18 February 2013

Environment Scrutiny Panel

Quarterly hearing with the Minister for Transport and Technical Services

MONDAY, 18th FEBRUARY 2013

Panel:

Deputy J.H. Young of St. Brelade (Chairman) Deputy S.G. Luce of St. Martin (Vice-Chairman) Connétable P.J. Rondel of St. John

Witnesses:

Deputy Kevin Lewis , Minister for Transport and Technical Services

Chief Officer, Transport and Technical Services Department

Director of Transport, Transport and Technical Services

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure, Transport and Technical Services Finance Director, Transport and Technical Services

Director of Operations, Transport and Technical Services

Topics Discussed

1. Bus service  Page 2
2. Asbestos  Page 25
3. Taxi regulation  Page 32
4. Scrap metal contract  Page 41
5. Skip-recycling/land use at La Collette  Page 55
6. Road resurfacing   Page 62

Deputy J.H. Young of St. Brelade (Chairman):

Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to this afternoon session of the Environment Scrutiny Panel and out meeting with the Minister for Transport and Technical Services and his team as part of our quarterly meetings when we talk about current matters. We have scheduled 2 hours maximum for this meeting and we have a number of subjects on the agenda, which we have given notice of to the Minister and his team, about the progress with the bus service, taxi consultation, the situation with asbestos, storage at La Collette, an update with the transfer of the scrap metal contract, opportunities for alternatives to land use at La Collette, and road resurfacing, and, if we have time, we may pick up one or 2 short small matters on the Green Street Police Station. There is quite a lot to cover there; I want to try and give priority to the bus service if I can. So, just to introduce myself, I am Deputy John Young, Chairman of the panel.

Deputy J.H. Young:

Thank you very much. I would just remind you, for the podcast, try and get near a microphone when you speak and obviously, if you can, keep voices raised. Minister, I want to start with asking you to tell us about progress with the new public bus contract. Just to set the scene, we were advised by yourself - and it was all Members of the States and the public - that the new contract would deliver an improved bus service and that we would get better value for money and we would get better reliability and we would achieve much more ridership, increased ridership, as part of the Sustainable Transport Strategy. Since then, all of us have been concerned with reports of problems, so I think this is your opportunity, and we would like to hear from you what you tell us about the problems, and also what actions you have in hand to try and address some of those please?

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services:

Thank you, Chairman. Overnight, or virtually overnight, the transfer of the bus service from one operator to another is obviously not an easy procedure and there is bound to be a period of settling in required. There were new buses with new equipment, old and new drivers working to new rosters, and a slightly amended timetable. Although all of these factors were improvements, they add up to quite a lot of change to manage. But they are changes that will bring a long-term benefit. Liberty Bus has been working through any issues that have arisen, taking action where possible and appropriate. Some of these actions may take longer to be able to implement than others, but I am confident that we are moving in the right direction.

Deputy J.H. Young:

Minister, what has been the percentage of buses on time in the last 6 weeks since the new operator took over?

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services:

As I say, obviously it was a big ask to start off on the beginning of the year with all the new buses, some new drivers, some old drivers, but it is improving week-on-week. Director of Transport?

Director of Transport:

I do not have the figures you asked for here, but what I would say is that Liberty Bus, when they first took over the service, were keen to improve their service from day one, and so they were ambitious from the beginning, as they are, in their aspirations for the bus service and they made changes to the number 20 and number 15 in particular, which proved to be problematic. To resolve that, they have now reviewed how they are handling the rostering of the driving staff and also as to how they apply the buses to that route and they have overcome most of the problems. The forthcoming timetable changes, which are out for consultation at the end of the month, will move another step towards ensuring that those services become far more reliable.

Deputy J.H. Young:

So are you not able to give us any performance figures at the moment?

Director of Transport:

I do not have the performance figures with me, no.

Deputy J.H. Young:

Do you recall, Minister, saying that, as part of the new contract, there will be a new system in place for penalties for the operator based on the performance of the operator?

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services:

Yes indeed, we are too early for that to kick in, but I think you are referring to the key performance indicators.

Chief Officer:

Just to clarify, we have those figures; we do not have those figures with us.

Director of Transport:

What I would add to that is that, in terms of how the contract is set up, the services are tracked by G.P.S. (global positioning system) and there is a period of grace within the contract to allow things

to settle down initially before that clause kicks in, so there is approximately from the beginning of

the contract 100 days of grace before the penalty or the service failure clause kicks in and the K.P.I.s (key performance indicators) start to apply. So we are not quite into that period at the moment; we are still in the bedding-in period.

The Deputy of St. Martin :

Is the computerised tracking system running?

Director of Transport:

The computerised tracking system is now running I believe in the majority of the buses. I would not say absolutely at the moment because we are in the process of refitting out some of the Connex buses, which have been brought into the new contract to run the school services, but also to double-up as backup for the main service, and we are in the process of refurbishing some of those and redelivering them, installing the C.C.T.V. (closed-circuit television) and all the other equipment, which is a condition of the new contract, which was not in the previous contract.

Deputy J.H. Young:

Those performance figures, presumably it was proposed that they would be published regularly?

Director of Transport:

They certainly could be; it is not in any document that they will be, but the information is produced automatically, the contract is open-book and transparent, so that information is available and the department always responds positively to freedom of information requests and the like.

Deputy J.H. Young:

Would you have any objections to publishing that figure, let us say, at the end of February, even though I accept the fact of what you said that the contract provides for no penalties, but if you will give people an awareness of what the performance levels currently are.

Chief Officer:

I think it depends on what you are trying to achieve. I think what the Director of Transport has alluded to and what the Minister has alluded to is a massive change of ownership of a contract, huge transitional problems, which we have seen over the last 6 months, and I think it has been a great achievement that they have managed to keep buses running and the timing has not been great and they have resolved that, but it is early days and I would not want to be publishing figures just to sort of ridicule a new company that is trying to set up in business.

Director of Transport:

Also, could I just add to that, you would not be able to have a comprehensive set of data at the moment because obviously we have brought the buses in and part of the reason for having this period of grace is to have time to install and to configure all of the software, so you would not have it for the entire period, because, as the buses came in, there was work going on to fit the DeltaTRAKs on to them and the like and that work has only been completed on some buses recently.

Deputy J.H. Young:

So when could we look forward to a start date for this information being available and published?

Director of Transport:

Can I come back to you on that?

The Connétable of St. John :

Can I come in there please, because I am getting vibes here that T.T.S. are a hands-on operation on this and you are saying that all the equipment has to be installed and you seem to be hands-on in all of this.

Director of Transport:

Some of the equipment is our equipment, so the equipment that tracks the buses is the department's and some of the software that is utilised to track buses is part of the infrastructure that we provide the bus operator.

The Connétable of St. John :

So therefore there will not be any accountability on what T.T.S. is doing, so if over time there is a failure for whatever reason, the contractor will be able to hide behind the deal that is going on with your department surely.

Director of Transport:

I think it depends on what you mean by failure. Under the contract, if there is a service failure, then there is a penalty that applies. If that failure is to track the buses because the G.P.S. unit failed and the G.P.S. unit was ours, or the aerial was ours, then of course then we would have to look at that, but generally we do not have that sort of equipment failure.

Chief Officer:

We have not had the luxury of 3 months of 2 operators in parallel; this has been an overnight,

midnight on 1st January going from one operator to the other, which has been a massive change,

so you cannot expect anybody to start off running 100 per cent at the start of a contract. As the Director of Transport says, the installation of the equipment needs to be in place. They could not have done that beforehand. So we have 100 days, a 3-month period, to bed in, which is what we have done. Each week the service standards are getting better and better.

Deputy J.H. Young:

But do you have the figures to show that; that they are getting better each week?

Chief Officer: Yes, we have.

Deputy J.H. Young:

Would you be prepared to release those, even accepting that they are not the complete deal, as it were?

Chief Officer:

But for what benefit?

Deputy J.H. Young:

Well I think what I recall the Minister saying was that this would be an open-book contract; there would be performance measures.

Chief Officer: There will be.

Deputy J.H. Young:

Which were, as I understand it, weak or absent in previous contracts, and that was one of the reasons for the changes to the contract; that there would be accountability for public money paid out and there would be clear measures and indicators of performance. I certainly accept that if the contract provides for a lead-in period that needs to be recognised, but there must be a point where that ceases.

Director of Transport:

What I would say is that the contract is transparent and we are willing to be open, but what we want to be able to provide is figures that have a statistical significance, and the problem is, if you

provide a small sample of bus journeys from the beginning of the contract, you are not likely to

have that; you are going to have something that is skewed. So my personal preference, in order to give a figure that is capable of withstanding public scrutiny, would be to get to the 100 days as the contract allows for and then hold them to account under the contract.

Deputy J.H. Young:

Fine, well maybe we will hold that then, Minister, because I think we have put you under a lot of pressure there. Would those figures also include the percentage of cancellations?

Director of Transport:

Yes, service failures; there are various types of service failure, but ...

Deputy J.H. Young:

Can you just outline what they are? What are other sorts of the service failures that would be?

Director of Transport:

I could not give you a comprehensive list off the top of my head, but service failures are a failure to run, the other K.P.I.s that are included in the list are things like dirty buses, late buses, early buses, all the type of things that you normally associate with the running of a quality service.

The Connétable of St. John : K.P.I. being?

Director of Transport:

Key performance indicator, and included in that as well are more qualitative matters such as customer satisfaction, so there will be regular customer satisfaction surveys carried out during the period of the contract.

Deputy J.H. Young:

That takes me nicely to another measure I suppose, not so much the buses running, but the experience of passengers. Waiting and queuing times, what can you tell us about that? What information do you have available of how they have changed since the new operator has come on board?

[14:45]

Director of Transport:

Certainly initially one of the teething problems was the configuration of the ticket machines and the

number of stops that the drivers had to scroll through a few times in order to be able to issue a

ticket. Those ticket machines are now being reconfigured to make it simpler and faster so ticketing times have been speeded up. Of course once the smart cards are introduced then those will speed up even further.

Deputy J.H. Young:

This is a prepayment system?

Director of Transport:

Yes, sorry, the smart ticketing system is allowing you to charge up an electronic ticket with a number of credits and then you just wave it past the machine as you get on and it registers.

Deputy J.H. Young:

What is the current target date for that?

Director of Transport:

We are trialling it already with staff; the staff has smart tickets in order to be able to have free travel. It is being trialled on a couple of the school services shortly. We are looking to pilot 2 senior schools shortly and the full smart cards will be rolled out to all schools in September and the general roll-out we are looking to achieve before summer.

Deputy J.H. Young: This year?

Director of Transport: Yes.

Deputy J.H. Young:

That will make a difference?

Director of Transport: A huge difference.

Deputy J.H. Young:

So what do we know about the access that the public have to route information? Are the timetables that are posted on the bus stops around the Island in accordance with the timetable that is now in use?

Director of Transport:

The buses, the timetables that are in position at stops and that are available from within Liberation Station should be the correct timetables, unless you are going to tell me you spotted one that is an old one somewhere.

Deputy J.H. Young:

I travelled on a bus from St. Aubin's the other night and looked at the time and there were a number of people waiting and I tested out the text system, which I am pleased to tell you worked, and gave me back some different times. So I wondered whether this is a general problem.

Director of Transport:

There are 2 aspects with the text system, because that gets information from the GPS systems, so that would give you the time of the bus arrival rather than the timetable times; it is looking at where the bus is and predicting when it is going to arrive with you.

Deputy J.H. Young:

That is clever. Is that not commonly known?

Director of Transport:

No; that is how it has worked for a long time. If there is a problem with the unit then it reverts back to the timetable information.

Deputy J.H. Young:

Other issues; what about issues with the buses themselves, the vehicles, any teething problems, settling-in problems with uses of buses on particular routes and so on been identified?

Director of Transport:

Reportedly, there has been a bit of a learning curve in terms of it is a new piece of plant and drivers have to get used to it, but they are slightly narrower than the previous Connex buses and obviously the wheels are in the front of the vehicle so they need to get a little bit used to it, but it is the same configuration as the coaches that have travelled around the Island for many a year.

The Connétable of St. John :

How many wing mirrors have they gone through?

Director of Transport:

They have gone through a number of wing mirrors, as the mirrors that come standard with the Optares are being damaged they are replacing them with smaller ones.

The Connétable of St. John :

So how many have they ... because I know they ran out of wing mirrors, so how many have they gone through?

Director of Transport:

I would not like to hazard a guess.

Chief Officer:

A substantial amount.

The Connétable of St. John :

I see. In the internet, we are supposed to be able to get up-to-date information on the bus routes, et cetera.

Director of Transport: You can now.

The Connétable of St. John : As of today we could not.

Director of Transport:

As of today, you should be able to.

The Connétable of St. John :

Sorry, Scrutiny Officer, can you confirm today we have tried?

Scrutiny Officer:

It was showing as down for repairs again unfortunately.

Director of Transport:

That is something we need to look into when we get back to the office, but what I would like to make clear of course is the contract and the basis of the contract has fundamentally changed. Previously, when it was the Connex contract, Transport and Technical Services had a great deal of involvement in: "These are the routes that you will run; this is how you run it." We effectively just paid the bus operators to drive the buses; we kept the revenue and took the revenue risk. Under the new contract, following the Comptroller and Auditor General's report, that model has completely changed, we are now the regulator. The bus operator is free to apply his commercial

acumen to run the services how he sees fit. Now, he carries all of the commercial risk, including

the revenue risk, so he has to run a service that is popular and that attracts patronage otherwise he is not going to make any money. If he is unable to do that and he is unable to meet the key performance indicators then the contract will not be renewed. So whereby before some of these questions may have been more appropriate about the website and the like were closer to T.T.S., in fact that risk has really moved over to the operator Liberty Bus. Of course, if they do make a profit because they are a charitable organisation then that profit will be returned back into the Island, half to the States and half to provide transport to people who would not normally be able to access buses.

The Connétable of St. John :

Yes, but surely as regulator you have to make sure that the things that we are told; that the public can go to the internet and look up the time of the buses or the routes, you have to make sure as a regulator that is happening.

Director of Transport:

You are 100 per cent correct in that, and that is part of the key performance indicators and the things that we will be measuring and holding them to account, so that is something, maybe I was not expressing it in the best way I possibly could, but while we will be monitoring and penalising where information and the like is not available and the service is not running to time, the contract is based in such a way that the organisation running the contract, the bus operator is fundamentally incentivised to achieve that himself, so we are aligned. We are in effect the stick, the carrot is the measurable performance, and so they have to get that right to survive.

Deputy J.H. Young:

So that major shift, would you agree, perhaps this is of the Minister, what the Director of Transport has described to us, that shift to becoming a regulator is going to take a little while for the public to get used to, is it not?

Director of Transport: I think so, yes.

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services: You are the bus expert, Director of Transport.

Deputy J.H. Young:

So that, to me, emphasises the strengths of what we said earlier about publication of the performance material, so people know what is being achieved and what they are being measured against.

Director of Transport: Yes.

The Deputy of St. Martin :

So to be quite clear, if we could, Minister, the operation of the website is going to be a key performance indicator?

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services: It should be.

Director of Transport:

The availability of public information, without having all the details here, is one of the key performance indicators.

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services: That sort of published information, as it were.

Deputy J.H. Young:

So, even if perhaps we cannot publish the numbers yet, because of the 100 days and all the things you have told us, it would be possible to publish the set of criteria on which the company is going to be measured?

Director of Transport: Absolutely.

Deputy J.H. Young:

So that could be done now?

Chief Officer:

We could do that now and start the figures on the second quarter.

Director of Transport:

If I have it in this document, I might be able to read them out in a few minutes.

Deputy J.H. Young:

We will try and get them on the record before we complete the meeting. I think, Steve, you wanted to pick up some points as well?

The Deputy of St. Martin :

I just had a couple of quite basic questions if I may. Could you tell us how many buses CT Plus bought from Connex?

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services:

I think it was just the blue Caetano buses, just for the schools, 17 or 18, I am not sure.

Chief Officer:

I believe it was about 18. I do not think all of them were serviceable.

Director of Transport:

Not all of them were required.

Chief Officer: We needed 8.

Director of Transport:

There was a need for the school bus service but the way Liberty Bus is looking to organise it is that some of them they will do up; they will be renovated to such a standard they can be used on the main service as well as backup buses when required.

The Deputy of St. Martin :

Have Liberty Bus imported all the new buses they said they would.

Director of Transport: Yes.

The Deputy of St. Martin :

So, do they have all their new buses here now, or are they importing more to the start of the summer timetable?

Director of Transport:

No, they have all the buses they require here now.

The Deputy of St. Martin :

Minister, we have been given some information from La Mare Vineyards, which I hope you would

agree is one of our Island's leading tourist places, and the information here says that their bus

service is reduced by 70 per cent during the week and 80 per cent on Sundays and I wondered if you would like to comment on that?

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services:

Yes, I have the email here, Deputy , and I have forwarded it to my team for comment.

The Deputy of St. Martin :

So, are we going to have a comment?

Director of Transport:

The team is looking into it at the moment. The aspiration is to ensure that everywhere gets a better bus service as far as possible. We would need to get back to you on that one, I am afraid.

The Connétable of St. John :

Can I come in on that; at the time of the changeover we were told, Minister, that we were going to get more, not less, when it comes to the bus services, in particular in the country areas. By what we are seeing in this report and on the route schedule, that is far from the case. Surely, from day one, that was the instructions given, more, not less, because that is what your comments to us were, it is on record, how do you answer that?

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services:

It will be more and not less but it was not all going to happen on day one. There are several upgrades happening I believe as we speak.

Director of Transport:

The current winter timetable is an improvement on the winter timetable that was run at the end of 2012. For Easter we are increasing the bus service level up to what is traditionally a summer level for the Island; so that is definitely in excess of what has been achieved in the past. Then there will be a further summer level timetable increase and the ambition is, and the intention is, to maintain some of those service increases year round. Now they do need to be supported by patronage in order to pay for them, but as the service grows and more people use it then more buses will be put on. Within the contract, we have basically managed to ... I cannot remember the figures; I will come back to you on that one.

Deputy J.H. Young:

Maybe you can think about this, but it would help again in terms of performance measures if there were some measures of the number of journeys and so on that we could use to track both, not

only the performance of the operator, but how we are achieving the service.

Director of Transport:

The new contract includes significantly more bus mileage than the previous contract at less money, so that is a year-on-year saving for the States, but it also is a year-on-year benefit to bus users because more bus mileage means more bus services.

Deputy J.H. Young:

I suppose the question is, and I suppose it is the Constable's question, is how can we be sure that where we have more bus mileage we have them in the right place?

Chief Officer:

Again, because of the different relationship we have now, we are incentivising the bus operator to be more innovative and to promote its services better in the countryside, but also provide services for the right people at the right time, so that is a longer burn; that is going to take them longer to achieve that, but they have guaranteed more bus miles.

Director of Transport:

How they are doing that is before setting up the service they held a meeting in every Parish, which bus passengers were able to come along to and to put their requests through, as well as through the website and Twitter and everything else. In advance of the timetable changes that are out to consultation now, they are going to hold another 4 Parish Hall meetings in various locations across the Island.

The Deputy of St. Martin :

I think to be fair to the general public those meetings were very good, because I attended some, but there was no indication at the time that the bus service was going to reduce in any way. The purpose of the meetings was to identify problems that could lead to a better bus service. Certainly in St. Mary I can imagine that if the meeting had gone along and been told that they were going to lose the Island Explorer and 70 per cent of their buses to La Mare that they would have had a view on that.

Director of Transport:

But the overall number of services; the services that the Island Explorer provided, will be replaced on the scheduled bus network, so there will be more scheduled bus movements on the standard route. The idea is that the Island has a community-based bus network that operates at a high level of service all year around and special services that were put on like the Island Explorer service in the summer will no longer be required because they will be covered by the scheduled

bus network, which will operate year around. Now, it should not be the case that any location

should significantly experience reduction in service; most places that have a patronage base, where there are people there to run buses for, should experience an improvement in the service. There will always be an issue, where there is one person at the far end of a service somewhere where it would be cheaper in truth to pay for a taxi than to run a bus down there, might have an issue.

The Deputy of St. Martin :

I appreciate all that but could you explain, and I will use it, but I do not want to really use a specific case, but in the La Mare situation that we have now, what is the procedure for you going back after following this meeting to speak to Liberty Bus, I mean how do you ... what is the procedure you are going to adopt in this particular instance?

[15:00]

Director of Transport:

What happens is Liberty Bus comes to T.T.S. with their proposed timetable changes and changes to the service in advance to the service being implemented. We then, in accordance with the law, publicise it, we put it in the J.E.P. (Jersey Evening Post), we invite comments from the public. Once we have received those comments, and CT Plus has held all the Parish Hall meetings and received the comments from the Parish Hall meetings, the information that is put out then is adjusted to try and meet the requirements of all the people who have responded to the consultation. So you see the public notice that was put out this time; that has a great deal more detail than any previous consultation notice that we put out, so that people have something concrete, instead of as previously it would just be couched quite vaguely as to what the bus operator intended to do, this time it is quite detailed.

Deputy J.H. Young:

With the changes to the routes, presumably route maps and all that are published, are they?

Director of Transport:

Yes, route maps are available in the timetables, yes.

The Connétable of St. John :

On this advert here that you put in, is that the size of the print that goes in the press?

Director of Transport:

I believe this was done in the full type.

Finance Director:

That was a full column of the J.E.P. so it is bigger.

The Connétable of St. John :

So it has been reduced, all right. But you say additional routes and I see there are additional departures, et cetera, but I have been calling for some time for hubs to be put in and whether in the north of the Island at Les Platons or the North Road, where we have plenty of parking, and yet nobody has come to see us about it.

Director of Transport:

We are meeting up with your committee in around a week's time, I think it is.

The Connétable of St. John :

I am aware of that; that is us who have asked for it, it is not the other way around. The company did not come and ask us; we had to ask for the meeting.

Director of Transport:

I appreciate what you are saying and we would like to do everything now but the bus operator obviously has a lot of work on their plate, within a limited resource, necessarily a limited resource like all companies, and they are ambitious about getting on and doing these things, but they cannot do everything at once. Likewise, we have had contact to talk about getting vulnerable adults to day-care centres and the like and CT Plus have expressed a willingness to look at that and want to set up meetings but they cannot do everything at once.

The Connétable of St. John :

No, but what worries me, when I put the question there, in October/November when they came to the group presentations out in the country, I was present and I put the question about hubs and it was shunned. Now that was a worry, a new operator still without the contract taken over, it worried me to think that there will not be an increase in that kind of service and I am a bit concerned that the mentality of the company is all, we do not want to increase things ...

Director of Transport:

What I would say in response to that is that the company was and is feeling their way and because they had to do 12 Parishes they brought people in from their head office who came and attended some of those Parish Hall meetings and collected the information and explained to people the company's ethos. We now have Kevin Hart in place who is the company's general manager who is learning how Jersey works and interested in the Island and it is he who will be the basic decision maker as to what is operationally viable and it will be the general manager who will be attending the St. John 's meeting to discuss communications.

The Connétable of St. John :

So, Director of Transport, yourself, do you have faith in these people?

Director of Transport: I have.

The Connétable of St. John : 100 per cent?

Director of Transport:

Yes, I believe that Kevin Hart , our general manager, is extremely experienced and I think he will be good for the Island's bus service.

Deputy J.H. Young:

Will you tell us, you said about the critical resource there of the operator, what can you tell us that they have told you about that? I mean how many people do they have in the Island to help manage this service and produce this service that we all want?

Director of Transport:

The company have taken over the previous operator's staff, so other than the general manager and managing director from the previous operation and a couple of individuals who chose to take redundancy, the rest of the staff have transferred over, 94 per cent of the previous operator's staff.

Deputy J.H. Young: So it is plus 2 then?

Director of Transport:

No, CT Plus have one J' cat and that is the general manager and so there is one person from the U.K. (United Kingdom) who is working in the Island to implement Liberty Bus' service and at the moment they are supported by an officer who has been seconded over from their U.K. service for a few months to help him get things set up, and then they have visits also from people like the health and safety officer, some directors and the like.

Deputy J.H. Young:

So they are putting extra resource in to try and sort some of these things?

Director of Transport:

They are in the short term, yes, they have been in the short term, and they are recruiting more people locally, so they are recruiting a staff manager; that advert has been out and they have their short list in and they will be interviewing for that shortly. So they are increasing their resources locally and they are bolstering it from head office as required.

Deputy J.H. Young:

So they are creating new positions there to try and train people up to do some of this management work.

Director of Transport:

Yes, and they have also implemented a training regime among the existing staff so they have just trained all their bus despatchers and there is a training company over training them; they will be doing training with the bus drivers and training all staff within the company, customer services and the like. They have also recruited a press officer/customer relations officer.

Deputy J.H. Young:

To do with P.R. (public relations)?

Director of Transport:

P.R. but also more than that; it is more about communications and getting the right information out, so in particular if you take the very successful services that were run during the snow, I mean we for the first time ever probably, or certainly for a long time in what were very severe conditions, the company was making nearly a full-scheduled service and the officer, who was in charge of that side of it, was tweeting out information to people so they could catch those services.

Deputy J.H. Young:

Before we start to draw this section to a close, can I just ask you about the school bus service; what can you tell us about that? I personally have had no feedback; have Members had any feedback they want to share with the Minister on that? Can you tell us what your feedback is on the school bus service?

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services:

It is very popular. Liberty Bus began to liaise with Education, Sport and Culture to develop improvements, pilot scratch cards, ticket scheme has been introduced at Les Quennevais and FCJ and the intention to have school smart cards fully rolled out by September.

Deputy J.H. Young:

Have you had any complaints from the schools or Education Department over this service?

Director of Transport:

Nothing in particular that stands out, unless you are coming to ...

Deputy J.H. Young:

No, I am not going to reveal one. If you can tell us, and what I will invite you to be is be open with us, so that we have some performance measures to judge, when we are here in 3 months' time, what has improved.

Chief Officer:

We are not aware of any big complaints.

Director of Transport:

There were issues with timeliness of the buses during the first week or so but those have been addressed as far as I know.

Deputy J.H. Young: That has gone away?

Director of Transport: Yes.

Deputy J.H. Young:

So children are able to get to school on time; that is what you are telling us?

Director of Transport:

That is what I am telling you, yes.

The Deputy of St. Martin :

If I could go back to the proposed changes that are coming into place at the end of March if I may, I note on this that we are at the consultation, but I also note that there is no proposal to do anything about the La Mare bus stop during the week, Minister. So what is the situation here? We have a proposal to double the number of stops on a Sunday at La Mare from 2 to 4, which is still going to leave us less than 50 per cent of what we had last year, and there is no proposal in this alteration programme to anything going to La Mare during the week. Now, if these proposals come into force that will mean we will run the entire summer season with 70 per cent smaller bus service to La Mare Vineyards. Now what are we going to do about that?

Director of Transport:

These proposals were put together probably in advance of the email exchange you are referring to, so the email exchange you referred to will now be taken into account in these final proposed services.

The Deputy of St. Martin :

It is just concerning when we hear from yourselves today that the Island Explorer is going to be replaced by a regular service and yet in the proposals we have before us for the end of this month, running into the summer, that would not appear to be the case.

Director of Transport:

All I can say is that they will be considered and what can be done as part of the consultation on this service and these changes, as implemented, will provide what the Island is usually used to as a summer service.

Deputy J.H. Young:

Can I just come in, because the point that I think that I am putting, listening to the exchange from Deputy Luce there, is the question really, what consultation went on prior to doing away with the Explorer and are there any other tourism locations that were getting the benefit of this service that are going to lose it?

Director of Transport:

As part of the consultation, we always have this to and fro with major tourism attractions as to the amount of service they would like and the amount of service that can be provided and this is something that goes on year-in/year-out. It is not just La Mare Vineyards, because there are other attractions that have always had to have more service and quite often we are able to add a bit extra on.

The Connétable of St. John :

So this is going to be more, not less, this is what you are telling us?

Director of Transport:

Yes, I mean this is Easter and we are going up to what would be traditionally a summer service and in the summer we are running more buses.

The Connétable of St. John :

It will be more, not less, than what was there previously under the previous supplier; that is what I am asking.

Director of Transport:

Across the network; I am not talking to any specific location, yes. There is more bus ...

The Connétable of St. John :

There is more, not less, that is what I am referring to, on say the St. Mary 's route where we have this ... because there are one or 2 attractions.

Director of Transport:

We will work with the operators to ensure the attractions are adequately serviced.

The Connétable of St. John :

All right. Can I come in there, Chairman; Broad Street, we notice there has been quite a bit of publicity in the last week or 2 about that bus stop, which in fact services one of the areas that I have responsibility for, the north of the Island, and my residents, who have difficulty getting into town anyway most of the time, have to walk from the middle of town up to the bus station; it is quite a ... because they are elderly people, it is a problem. Is the Broad Street going to be reinstated?

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services:

There are some buses that do pick up and drop off at Broad Street. Do you have which ones?

Director of Transport:

I do not have that with me, no.

The Connétable of St. John :

Could that be reviewed, because that is of concern?

Director of Transport:

One of the things that is becoming apparent is that Scrutiny is quite interested in the detailed mechanics of the service and how it is operating, and we would be very happy to set up a meeting with our logistics manager and Kevin Hart of Liberty Bus if you would like where you can have an opportunity to drill down into some of the detail, which we have not brought along with us here.

Deputy J.H. Young:

That sounds a good idea, because I think all the questions we are asking I think are questions that are out there in the public, which is why we are doing that today, and accepting the fact that this is a transitional period, but of course there has to be an end to that and a point at which the public have confidence. A lot of these things are about consultation, you said that there are separate meetings happening, is there any sort of what I would call an umbrella group that brings all these issues together right across the Island? Because obviously you have to make choices; do you have that in place?

Director of Transport: A bus users' forum, yes.

Deputy J.H. Young: Or something like that.

Director of Transport:

Yes, I mean there was one previously and I understand it ceased operating because people lost ... it was not like people sustained the interest. That is certainly the type of thing that Liberty Bus are looking at.

Deputy J.H. Young:

Certainly, Minister, we might look at discussing that with the operator and come up with some structure.

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services:

We would welcome a bus users' forum. I have met with members of the original bus users' forum, in fact one or 2 are with us today.

Deputy J.H. Young:

Then that would help have a dialogue on some of these issues, Minister.

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services: Absolutely.

Deputy J.H. Young: To try and ...

Male Speaker:

Can I offer something at that stage; I am really ...

Deputy J.H. Young:

I am sorry; I do not mind if you want to pass a note to the panel, if you think there is a question, but I cannot let you interrupt the Minister, so if you would not mind, thank you. Minister, we give you a lot of very negative-based questions; I think we had to do that and you have answered them very well and particularly the Director of Transport is giving us a lot of information, which is new to us. Is there anything you want to say about the service as a whole; are there any positive measures that you can point to us to kind of balance out our exchange today? Ridership, for example, is that holding up? What information do you have on ...?

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services:

Ridership is holding up, yes. Obviously we started off with a bit of a shaky start through various reasons, a few industrial problems, but these are being ironed out now. I am delighted to see the 6 double deckers on the southern route taking care of from the airport to Le Marais; we have the Solo Optares covering all the urban areas and the smaller Bluebirds covering rural areas, which are much smaller and will not cause congestion in the roads. I am looking forward to a great expansion to the whole system. I think we have put about 17 bus shelters up in recent times, we have another 6 to come.

The Connétable of St. John : Any in St. John , Trinity , St. Mary ?

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services: Yes, we have ... do you have the list?

Director of Transport:

La Route de Saint-Jean; I am not sure quite ... [Laughter] We will be in there shortly. Since 2010 we have put in 23 bus shelters; we are putting another 3 in, in the next couple of months, and another 3 later on in the year, so that brings us up to 29. Given in the previous decade only 6 were installed I think it shows we make a great ...

The Connétable of St. John :

How many bus stops are there across the Island please?

[15:15]

Director of Transport:

I will have to come back to you.

I am keen to put up bus shelters wherever possible; we want to encourage greater ridership on the buses and obviously people should wait in comfort without getting soaked. Obviously we have logistical problems if there is a granite wall nearby and we are very grateful to Deputy Richard Rondel for providing some space that we can encroach into and put a shelter up there. This is all good stuff and we could do with more of that.

The Connétable of St. John :

I am sure we can supply some additional land, the Rondels, if we had a bus service. [Laughter]

Deputy J.H. Young:

This is a very enjoyable exchange about the bus shelters and the Rondels so I am going to close that part of our meeting and move on now and I am going to change the order slightly to give your officers a breathing space and talk to asbestos next please. So I think I wanted to find out from you, the last time we spoke to you about what you are doing about disposal of the material in the containers in La Collette was at our hearing on 24th July when basically, not to cut a finer point, Minister, you told us that you were waiting for the Minister for Planning and Environment to sort this out and you were pretty fed up that situation had gone on for a long time. Would you like to give us an update please, Minister, on how things are?

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services:

Certainly. Jersey has a significant amount of legacy asbestos within the Island's buildings and when buildings are demolished the asbestos is currently delivered to a secure area in La Collette and transferred into I.S.O. (International Organization for Standardization) containers; that is shipping containers. My department has reviewed the long-term options for storage and recycling asbestos and can confirm the following: that the existing storage method is of high risk due to the location of the containers and the corrosion they have suffered. We have reviewed all options to date to find the best solution, regardless of cost. We are recommending that the asbestos is transferred into a specially engineered pit within La Collette in a manner that allows the asbestos to be removed at a later date and we will continue to review available technology to assess whether a recycled safe final solution can be utilised. We are currently waiting on the Minister for Planning and Environment, who will not agree to the application, as he believes that we can recycle the asbestos in France. My officers are going to visit the plant to confirm whether they can accept all our asbestos waste for treatment.

The Deputy of St. Martin :

When is that happening please, Minister?

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services: Within the next ...

Chief Officer:

In the next month. There is no date specifically been arranged but we are trying to ...

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services: So as soon as possible.

The Deputy of St. Martin :

I do not think we can stress this enough, but in July last year, Minister, you said you are in regular talks with the Minister for Planning and Environment and we would encourage him to make an early decision. This is almost unacceptable.

Chief Officer:

We have been waiting 3 years now for a decision on this. We have done everything we can. This was brought in front of the Chief Minister just before Christmas and at the Chief Minister's request we have been asked to go to Bordeaux to see what is available there.

Deputy J.H. Young:

Have you had your planning application in for 3 years?

Chief Officer:

The planning application has been in for approximately 3 years, yes.

The Connétable of St. John :

Are you taking anybody with you from P. and E. (Planning and Environment) to the ...?

Chief Officer:

The trip is being organised by the Environment Director and I am going along to represent Transport and Technical Services and also Colin Myers is going to be representing the Health and Safety Inspectorate on that visit as well.

The Deputy of St. Martin :

Do you have, before you go, a set of criteria that you are going to be looking to work to so that when you come back you will know immediately whether this is an option that is viable or not?

Chief Officer:

We hope so, yes. The criteria basically are around the risks to human health in terms of the preparation of the material, how to present the material to the processing facility within Bordeaux, and what type of material will be allowed to be treated within Bordeaux. Those are the 3 criteria, which is why all 3 of us are going to be on the trip.

Deputy J.H. Young:

If this were to happen, what is your understanding about whose permissions are needed to do that?

Chief Officer:

If the material is to go for recycling, which this plant in Bordeaux does, then there is no permissions required for that in that it is an allowable transfer of material under the Basel Convention. If the material was going for disposal then that would be a very different matter.

Deputy J.H. Young:

So there will not be any need to notify the U.K. authorities or anything of that trans-boundary movement of waste?

Chief Officer:

Not under a duly reasoned request, no. It would be under other legislation for the shipping, but because it will be exported for treatment and for recycling, it will be allowed within the Basel Convention.

Deputy J.H. Young:

That is your understanding of what this plant is; it is for recycling?

Chief Officer:

The plant is a plasma plant, which treats asbestos and turns asbestos into effectively a glass plasma, it melts the asbestos and mixes it in with molten glass and turns it into a very hard and resilient material, which can be re-utilised for other needs.

Deputy J.H. Young:

Do you think it can deal with the sort of material you have in those containers?

Chief Officer:

Certainly the experts in the field who have advised us on the 2 reports, the first report and then the peer review report, said they could not because of the material we have is a mixture of asbestos and asbestos-contaminated material, and that is the key difference.

The Deputy of St. Martin :

Surely the issue is going to remain the same, Minister, it is not the fact that the plant in Bordeaux cannot cope with asbestos, it cannot cope with all the bits that are stuck to the asbestos.

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services:

Basically, yes, I think we are talking boiler pipes that are coated and caked in asbestos sleeves and such like, and scaffold, bits and pieces like that; that is the problem.

Chief Officer:

But we have been instructed to visit and to ascertain this directly, which is what we are undertaking to do.

Deputy J.H. Young:

So the visit will say either that is going to be feasible or not. Presumably there is a cost issue for you as well; what is the cost of this?

Chief Officer: For the visit?

Deputy J.H. Young: No, for the exportation?

The Deputy of St. Martin :

If there is no cost to the visit I find that very concerning.

Chief Officer:

I am not paying for the visit; that is for sure.

Deputy J.H. Young:

But what I am saying to you, if you do not need permissions, there is the practicality and the cost of it.

Chief Officer:

The indicative cost per tonne is far higher than our planned proposal, but it would be, and let us be honest here, if this works it is an elegant solution and a very appropriate solution for Jersey. My understanding is it is not fit for our waste as it is presented, but ...

The Connétable of St. John :

How many tonnes of waste do we have currently a year?

Chief Officer:

That is a good question.

The Connétable of St. John : You have 240 containers plus?

Chief Officer:

We do not know the exact numbers because a lot of the containers were collected before we did the real analysis on them, so if you average about 10 containers, 200-foot of containers with say 5 tonne of asbestos within there, or asbestos-contaminated material. We have to be clear, this is not just asbestos. Then you are looking at 1,200-1,300 tonne.

The Connétable of St. John :

Within the containers at the moment, quite a few of them are obviously fractured, et cetera, it is a concern that we have photographs sent to us of this, and I will pass it around to you to have a look, where there is leaching caused by ... there is like a water spout coming out of the hinges of the container and it is of concern that, if that has contaminated, asbestos, as you know, as well as I do, is fine while it is wet, if the asbestos fibres are getting into the atmosphere, as that appears to be the case there, that is of great concern to myself and I should think to the environment in general and the inspectorate. Your inspectors, have they not passed comment on that type of thing?

Chief Officer:

To reassure yourselves and anybody, the asbestos that is stored in there is double-bagged with appropriate mechanisms for treating asbestos, so myself and the Director of Environment and Health and Safety Inspectorate went to the site last week, opened up 10 containers to look at the contents of that. That is a safe thing to do. The issue of the container is of just a secure place to store it. If there is water ingress then there is water going out that will not be contaminated with asbestos; it will have flowed over the bags and over the contents, but it is not a contamination. In the limit, in the end, we have a problem, because if sunlight starts degrading the bags, and we had

a container fail here about 4 years ago where the roof basically failed on a container, which we

had to remove and replace the contents of it. So, for the small leaks, it is not ideal but it is safe, but it is not something we should be proliferating and sustaining, we have to sort this out. It is the highest thing on our risk register within T.T.S. and we have been trying to solve it in a professional way for the last 3 years.

Deputy J.H. Young:

So part of your visit will establish, if it is a feasible solution, as to what your preferred method of moving that material is, whether you move the containers or whatever you do; you will look at that?

Chief Officer:

We have had a contract ready to sign, a tendered contract, for the last 2 and a half years to extricate the material from these containers and then put it in a lined pit at La Collette. Even for that operation, located within La Collette, we were not going to move it in the containers because a certain number of containers we would not view as safe enough to lift and move without the right encapsulation. So we know we have a problem and we have to deal with it appropriately.

Deputy J.H. Young:

So not only do we have a problem with the contents of the containers, but we also have a problem with what we do with the containers as well?

Chief Officer:

Afterwards, you can decommission the containers and scrap them, so there are mechanisms to do that.

Deputy J.H. Young:

One more question: the Chief Minister has invited you to go along at the Minister for Planning and Environment's request. Does that mean that funding is going to be provided for you to enable you to take this disposal route?

Chief Officer:

I think we will cross that bridge when we come to it. Certainly, we do not have spare provision for any funding within T.T.S. unless we stop the road programme, which I am sure we will be going on to later.

The Deputy of St. Martin :

So there is a road programme to stop, is there?

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services:

I will be approaching the Minister for Treasury and Resources.

Deputy J.H. Young:

So how soon do you think you will be able to let us know what the outcome of that visit is?

Chief Officer: Probably the day after.

Deputy J.H. Young:

But when is it? Come on, give us the date.

Chief Officer:

There has not been an exact date put in the diaries yet; we have been trying to liaise with ... the Director for Environment is sorting it out.

Deputy J.H. Young: Within the next month?

Chief Officer: Yes.

The Deputy of St. Martin :

Can we both be quite clear, I mean this is hugely important and I am concerned that you go there and come back and we just continue the same arguments that we have had between yourselves and the Environment Department for the last 2 and a half years. Can we be sure before you leave that there is some criteria that you are going to say: "When we arrive at the plant, if the plant can do this, we will agree to move the stuff, or if the plant is not capable of doing this ..." Will the Minister for Planning and Environment agree to a set of criteria that we can stick to so that the day after you get back we can have no more controversy as to whether we are going to do this or not?

Chief Officer:

I think for a point of note, the Environment Department has agreed with this strategy that we have adopted for the last 3 years, as has the Health and Safety Inspectorate within Jersey. This is the views of the Minister for Planning and Environment and I think what you have asked is perfectly sensible and rational but I do not believe we will be able to get that agreed prior to going.

The Connétable of St. John :

To the Minister, around the Council of Ministers, if that is the case, what are you going to do about it around the table with your Chief Minister and others?

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services:

If we get the agreement that it can go then I will approach the Minister for Treasury and Resources and it will go as soon as possible. It was part of my election pledge that I will deal with it and I will deal with it.

The Connétable of St. John :

Because, even if the Minister for Planning and Environment does not give the go-ahead and you think it is the right thing to do, will you make it happen?

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services:

If he does not give the go-ahead, then that is something we will have to take up with the Chief Minister.

Deputy J.H. Young:

I am going to move on now from that, so thank you very much for updating us, I am sure we will be coming back to that. I would like now to go back to matters transport and ask you some questions on the taxi regulation consultation. This is really we want to have an update from you on your intentions on the responses to the consultation draft that went out in March 2012, so coming up for a year ago, consultation finished in June. We also particularly are very, very conscious of the outstanding comments of the Jersey Competition Regulatory Authority of December 2010, which says that the present system of taxi regulation was not working in consumers' best interests. They made a number of suggestions and that was also picked up by the Channel Islands Competition and Regulatory Authority in their comments in June 2012, which they have authorised are public and are on their website. So this has taken a long time, Minister. Can you tell us what actions you are proposing to bring this long-running matter to a conclusion please?

[15:30]

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services:

As you know, Chairman, we undertook our consultation last year and since then we have been analysing the feedback and putting together a report, which will form the White Paper, which I expect to lodge by this July. The recommendations from the 2012 report were as follows: "Artificial barriers to access to the industry should be removed in principle; Jersey should move forward to a system where quantity control is replaced by quality control; and quality control aspects should

include a maximum fare tariff throughout the industry, improved accessibility and service for

disabled people, compellability guaranteed to taxi users, compensation for delay, a requirement to accept electronic payment systems throughout, a requirement for clearer performance indicators and monitoring, common livery, improved driver training and reducing the environmental impact. While there is a strong case for removing the distinction between controlled and restricted taxis, particularly as Smartphone booking and payment arrangements develop, we are conscious that the big-bang approach, were this to be introduced at one go, would be potentially disruptive and would lead to congestion and conflict. Consequently, it is recommended that a phased process develops by moving towards a unitary licensing model in conjunction with industry representatives. Inherent in a unitary licensing model would be the elimination of the distinction between individual plated and company plates."

Deputy J.H. Young:

So that is a major policy decision, Minister, you have committed now to a single system of regulation between the 2 classes?

Director of Transport:

Can I just add to that; those were the issues that we sought the public's view on in the Green Paper.

Deputy J.H. Young:

That is the recommendations.

Director of Transport:

So in the Green Paper we said: "We think that these issues are a good idea and we will ..."

Deputy J.H. Young:

Okay, thank you for that clarification.

Director of Transport:

From that, then it is now a question of which of those I think fall in the nuance of why I do that so those are all the issues that were printed out for discussion last year.

The Deputy of St. Martin :

So the question is then, Minister, what major changes, from what you have just read out, are you going to implement in the White Paper?

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services:

We will see if that is going to be lodged in July and that is still being put together. We have it in very basic draft form and it is still to be gone through by the officers.

Deputy J.H. Young:

You have read out a very long and impressive list there. Presumably, you have some priorities in there which are the most important ones. Could you tell us which are the most important ones? For example, are you proposing that people will get access to an even playing field with everybody paying the same price for the journey, for example?

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services:

I think the goalposts have moved considerably over the last few years where you had cab drivers which traditionally run from restaurants, people's homes, et cetera, and you have the rank taxis that were pulled up from the rank. Now that people have mobile phones, obviously that distinction is being blurred somewhat and, as the Director of Transport mentioned earlier, there is a lot of technology involved in this and we are possibly going down that road.

Director of Transport:

Yes, I think what we can say is what has come out of the public consultation, and that is that customers do not know about, do not understand, do not care about the specifics to do with the likes of taxis. From within the industry, the people who are in private hire cannot see the advantages of it but people who operate controlled taxis from ranks do see an advantage to having a specific rank type taxi. The customer does not understand the difference between the controlled taxi rank, taxi charges and those charged by the private company. They are confused by how they can take a taxi from a rank and then pay a different price when they take a taxi from their home. They do not understand why that is. They do not understand how all taxis can be hailed on the street at certain times. In the middle of the summer when there are a lot of events on, there probably is not enough taxis that meet that peak demand but those peaks are very small in duration and a very few days of the year. Often, there is probably more than enough taxis. So how do you manage the peak vehicle requirement when it is not required all the time? There has got to be solutions made in terms of technology and how you run your taxis and there is some evidence that there are difficulties booking taxis in rural locations at different times of the day.

The Deputy of St. Martin :

So the answer then, Minister, therefore is to deregulate the taxis and make sure we get taxis in to places where we need them at times when we need them surely.

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services:

Well, from a driver's perspective, opinion about suitability of the current arrangements was split decisively, according to whether the driver was a restricted or controlled driver.

The Connétable of St. John :

Can I stop you there, Minister? That argument has been picked out for the last 20 years since I have been in the States by the drivers, controlled and otherwise. There has been nobody strong enough to deal with this and give the Island a proper taxi service with one charge and what I really want to hear is something solid coming from you and not bringing up the same old story being given by Ministers, by presidents of committees that I have heard over the last 20 years and you are giving the same answers.

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services: This is not an answer. It is a statement.

The Connétable of St. John : A statement?

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services:

This is what is. I am not saying what will be. I am saying this is what is at the moment and that is what we are dealing with now.

The Connétable of St. John : I have got real concerns ...

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services:

That is why the White Paper is coming out and that is what the officers ...

Director of Transport:

If I could just add a little bit to that. The States and the States Sustainable Transport Policy in 2010 basically set T.T.S. a new objective of reviewing the taxi service and implementing changes by the end of 2015. A previous Minister and a current Minister set ourselves the programme we are working to. The department necessarily has limited resources to apply for some of the different projects and so we have put quite a lot of effort in to taxis to get this moving but we are working to the States timetable that the States set us.

Deputy J.H. Young:

Maybe, Minister, that is a long way away and that is beyond the lifetime of this current States, is it

not, 2015? Minister, given the importance of this and all the things you mentioned which seem to

have been around for a long time, do you think there is a case for bringing that timetable forward or at least to the lifetime of this current States?

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services:

If we could do it in the current States, then we would be more than happy to do it.

Deputy J.H. Young:

What would you need in order to do so then, Minister?

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services: Probably a lot more officers which I cannot afford.

Chief Officer:

Just to clarify, the officers who will be delivering to the new bus contract, which has been 3 years of intensive work and lots of pain and suffering are going to be going on to taxis. There are not 10 people sat there. It is 2 people. This is a very small team who have got to deliver these things properly and in the right manner. Taxis are very emotive and very difficult. You have an industry which has had a very lucrative existence from Jersey, particularly in the tourist industry and the finance industry, but it is in recession now, like many industries are, and they are struggling. You have very different facets of the taxi industry. You have commercial companies and you also have rank drivers who have finally organised themselves in a far better and more professional way than they did in the past so it is not a simple solution to come up with and it is one which requires sensitivity on both sides. It is very easy to say: "Deregulate and open it up to a free market" but I think you have to be cognisant that people have to earn a living out of this business, not an excessive one, but one which is fair and reasonable.

Deputy J.H. Young:

I think you have answered that. I think what I kind of want to try and do is refocus the question a bit. I think certainly from what the Constable says and what Deputy Luce says, there does seem to be right at the very top of the list of what people are looking for is consistency of taxi pricing and value for money. Now you have a system of regulation but what we understand, Minister, and this tells us this, you only regulate half the story.

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services: Yes.

Deputy J.H. Young:

People do not know the difference between one type of taxi and another.

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services:

No. As the Director of Transport mentioned earlier, people do not know the difference between a taxi and a cab and private hire. People come out of a club or whatever at night or a restaurant, people just want to get home and they are not particularly interested if it is a taxi or if it is a cab but the pricing structure is different.

Director of Transport:

Also just to add a bit in terms of timescales, obviously once it has been debated, then change can start. Some changes can be brought in very quickly but other changes will take longer in time so some investment is required to change. Say if we went down to a single livery for the taxi service in Jersey, you have to tell people long enough in advance from the planner's decisions. It is the same even if you look at going down to a single regulated tariff. There is consultation to be had with all the companies. They have to adjust their business plans, so there are different timescales. Things like soiling charges for people who are sick in the back of taxis, that kind of thing could probably be introduced quite quickly.

The Deputy of St. Martin :

I understand all this but I have to say 2 years ago, I was saying exactly those things to the taxi industry: "Sort yourselves out". Now they have not done it. We are 2 and a half years down the road now from this first J.C.R.A. (Jersey Competition Regulatory Authority) Review and we are making no progress. Minister, are you not concerned that you appear to be on a collision course with the J.C.R.A. over many of the basic fundamental issues here?

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services:

I do not think we are necessarily at odds with the J.C.R.A. because, as has been pointed out, the team has been working flat out on the bus contract and now that is up and running they are concentrating on the taxi business.

The Deputy of St. Martin :

Well, the regulator states - and I will just pick out a couple of very quick points if I may - that it is not usual to protect a particular industry when you have block layers and plumbers and electricians. You say people have to make a living but you are affording protection to a particular body of people out there that would not have that protection if they were working elsewhere in the economy. Another particular issue I would just raise here is this quantitative one where what you are proposing goes against best practice in both the U.K. and further afield.

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services:

As I say, we are not at odds with the J.C.R.A. What I am saying basically is there should be possibly a phased change involved to avoid any disruption but this is something that will be looked at when the final draft of the White Paper is produced.

The Deputy of St. Martin :

Even the regulator, Minister, says here he is unconvinced that there is a need for an adopted phased approach.

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services: That is his opinion.

Chief Officer:

I think the Competition Regulator had certain views and we would be very happy for him to take on the whole regulation of taxis if he wants but it is our responsibility at present and we have to be fair in terms of what we do and what we finish up has to be sustainable for this Island. It is easy to say these things but when it comes to delivering them, you have to deliver them properly and be aware of the effects of delivering them. So we do acknowledge that the team delivering this is not ... my priority was the bus contract and the Minister's priority was the bus contract. That was the ...

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services:

Absolutely, and I am sure we completely agree with you but, on the other hand, you do have to realise that the taxi issue has been bubbling away now for not just 18 months or 2 years. It is much, much longer than that.

The Connétable of St. John : Decades.

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services: It has not been resolved.

Chief Officer:

No. We agree and we are happy to take it on but we take it on because what we finish up with has to be better for Jersey.

Deputy J.H. Young:

Obviously, it is a difficult subject but we need to accept that a priority must surely be to at least arrive at an even playing field for taxi users so they know what they are getting and they are

paying the same price for the same journeys at the same time. Is that not a fair objective?

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services:

We want a level playing field for everyone including the public of Jersey.

Director of Transport:

Just to demonstrate, first, there is a draft White Paper here and this is where we have to get to the stage where we can go to consultation on it and we can then take it to the States to the vote to see which of the changes the States wish to do for them.

Deputy J.H. Young:

So when will be the States debate, Minister?

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services: Possibly lodged in July.

Deputy J.H. Young: Lodged in July?

Director of Transport:

We have to have a 3-month consultation of it so ...

The Connétable of St. John :

On that then, given that you are working currently within a 1937 I think or 1935 Road Traffic Law, anything to do with taxis when they were still going around with a horse and carts and taxis together, in your White Paper, will you be updating the Road Traffic Law at the same time because at the end of the day, if you are working on a 75 year-old law for a 2015 traffic system for taxis, it is not going to work?

Director of Transport:

No, and the White Paper is how regulation of taxis should be changed and so there will need to be amendments sought to that to the States paper which is which of these recommendations do you wish to adopt?

The Connétable of St. John :

Right, therefore, what work is being done currently by your D.V.S. (Driver and Vehicle Standards) Department to update those laws or start working on those laws because I can recall when we had responsibility when I was on the committee of the day for D.V.S. and along with Home Affairs, at the time I was on both those, the D.V.S. were given certain instructions to go out and get these laws updated. What progress, if anything, has happened? Are you aware?

[15:45]

Director of Transport:

I am not aware of the changes that you are referring to, I am afraid, back in that time. I am aware that back in those days sort of when D.V.S. was at Home Affairs, then they had an officer who was responsible for making rule changes and the Fundamental Spending Review has stripped out that resource. However, D.V.S. do put in a lot of effort in to ensuring that those draft instructions were prepared in a timely way and that legislation progresses. Once the States include a direction of travel, in terms of taxi regulation, is established, then they will get on to ensuring that the necessary parts of the law are updated.

The Connétable of St. John :

So, therefore, we could be another 10 years away.

Deputy J.H. Young:

If I could come in there, presumably, Minister ...

The Connétable of St. John :

Could I have my answer to that please?

Director of Transport:

We will apply resources that are required to get the update and the law draft instructions prepared as quickly as possible. Once the law drafting instructions are prepared, then this area is always a ... not necessarily backlog, it was prioritisation of that process that goes on terms of which laws are then ...

The Connétable of St. John : So we could be 10 years away?

Director of Transport:

It can take some time to get laws relating to transport through.

Deputy J.H. Young:

When you bring your White Paper, presumably you will spell out where resources are needed including law drafting resources.

Director of Transport: Yes, indeed.

Deputy J.H. Young:

So I think we have that clear, Minister. You are going to produce that White Paper this July. I think I would like now to move on now to address similar updates on the transition to the new scrap metal contract where you appointed a new contractor and I think this is relatively recent but if you can give an update, Minister, on the new contract and how it is going and what are the key changes and then I would like to talk to you also about the exit arrangements for the former one please.

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services:

Certainly, Chairman. From 2nd January, Hunts (Jersey) Limited has been operating a new scrap yard from the site of the old Energy from Waste plant. It will be located alongside the demolition contract for the old Energy from Waste plant. The scrap yard will be located on the site of the old E.f.W. (Energy from Waste) for approximately 18 months while T.T.S. consider available options for a long-term location. The initial feedback from Hunts (Jersey) Limited has been very positive and operations are progressing well, albeit they are slightly constricted by the confined area.

Deputy J.H. Young:

So they have taken on the new site, have they, Minister?

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services: This is a temporary site, yes.

Deputy J.H. Young:

Sorry, I missed that. Where was that?

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services:

This is next to the old Energy from Waste plant in Bellozanne.

Deputy J.H. Young:

Was there any contamination on that old site?

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services: No, that has all been removed.

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure:

If I can just clarify: that demolition of the old Energy from Waste has commenced and, indeed, has nearly been cleared around the base of the chimney. By the end of last year, that was a significant size such that the temporary scrap metal from that could be sited there so that is running from there. We moved our staff out of the old what we used to call the weighbridge offices so Hunt have now taken on that clearly. People coming to deliver scrap metal to Hunt come across what was the weighbridge, it gets weighed and it goes in to the site there. Within the site, there is a split between the scrap metal operator and the demolition contractor so they are both working side by side. The demolition contractor will knock down the main E.f.W. building by the end of the year and then there will be a switchover on the site where the scrap contractor will move to where the old E.f.W. building was and then the chimney will come down next year. In the meantime, we are considering other options for where the new scrap yard will go to. We have funding in 2014 so during the course of this year, we will be able to look for a location for it, submitting planning applications and tendering the work ready to start in January 2014.

Deputy J.H. Young:

So where do people take their scrap vehicles now then? Where do they take them?

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure:

On the area of the E.f.W. which is currently being demolished.

Deputy J.H. Young:

So they deliver them up there, do they?

The Connétable of St. John : Gate 4 at Bellozanne.

Deputy J.H. Young:

Do they do any vehicle dismantling there or is it just ... can you talk us through what processes go on compared to what used to be?

Director of Operations:

It is the same process that goes on when they do the vehicle dismantling at gate 4 at Bellozanne and then those vehicles effectively get crushed and get ready to be shipped and they get shipped to a plant and then they later get recycled on.

Deputy J.H. Young:

So there is no difference?

Director of Operations:

Different things in that the old scrap yard at Picot and Rouillé maybe recycled more things on site and there were certainly some residues that would go through to the Energy from Waste plant. With the new operation with Hunts (Jersey) Limited, no scrap residue goes to the Energy from Waste plant and that is probably a big difference for us with regards to what we can do in the future with E.f.W. effectively bottom ash residue if we hope to recycle that in the future.

Deputy J.H. Young:

Why is that? Is that the plant that the Hunts have had to put in there, or what is it or it is just a different technique?

Director of Operations:

It is a slightly different technique but what they are not doing is putting those machines through certain types of machinery to be able to operate it.

Chief Officer:

Picot and Rouillé operated a fragmentiser so what they did was that basically shreds everything down to a small particle and they did it very well. It was a very efficient plant. You then take out your ferrous and your non-ferrous but you are left with a residue. Hunts (Jersey) Limited do that but they do that in a site in the U.K. so in Jersey, they de-fuel the car or vehicle, they then put it through a press and sheer so they make it in to a sort of James Bond box and then that goes to Portsmouth on a shipping container.

Deputy J.H. Young:

Presumably, there is a new financial arrangement as part of the contract or a new financial contract between the operator and ourselves.

Chief Officer:

Again, what we have tried to achieve here is a K.P.I.- based arm's length relationship, a far simpler one than in the past. With the previous operator, it was a lease arrangement and this is a different operation whereby there are K.P.I.s in terms of their performance but it is a more business focussed and performance related financial arrangement.

Deputy J.H. Young:

Presumably then, it is only an interim until we get the new site approved?

Chief Officer:

That is right, yes. We have had to do an interim arrangement because they have had to compromise in their operation because of the scale and size of the plant but when we get to the new site, wherever it is, then the arrangement will revert back to what was originally in the tender.

Deputy J.H. Young: Okay.

The Deputy of St. Martin :

What happens to the scrap metal that is non-vehicle, if you like, at the moment? Is that going to be containerised and shipped out or ...?

Chief Officer:

Yes, it is, everything.

The Deputy of St. Martin :

We will have no requirement for scrap boats any more now?

Chief Officer:

No, all the scrap from the incinerator which, as you can imagine, is massive R.S.J.s (Rolled Steel Joist) and steelwork, is all being processed through the site there.

Director of Operations:

Hunts (Jersey) Limited ship every day to the U.K.

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services: Is that all in containers now?

Chief Officer:

Yes, open top containers.

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services: Open top containers?

Chief Officer: Open top.

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure:

It is a very different operation to what we were doing. It would be worth perhaps coming down and have a look.

Deputy J.H. Young:

Yes, I think we would probably like to do that.

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure:

We could show you exactly what is happening and meet the operators.

Deputy J.H. Young:

Yes, I think that would be a good idea.

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure: They are a very professional set of operators.

Deputy J.H. Young: Thank you.

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure:

They are managing to work on a very small constrained site, they have been very amenable, they have a big demolition contract working next to them but they are doing very well.

Deputy J.H. Young:

Sorry, I probably missed your opening remarks. When do you think they will be able to take on the full site?

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure:

Well, we have not found a full site yet. We get the funding for a new location in January 2014 so once the funding comes through, we are probably talking about 6 months to build wherever it goes, so the middle of 2014 we should be moving them and commissioning them. So it was always going to be 18 months basically.

Deputy J.H. Young: Okay.

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services: Do you have a site identified at La Collette for that?

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure:

La Collette is an option. We do not have any favoured sites. We are just gearing up to the feasibility study at the moment. It may be La Collette, it may be the site existing or it may be elsewhere but ...

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services:

When you say "existing", do you mean the existing Picot and Rouillé site or the E.f.W. site?

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure:

The former, yes. Not the old E.f.W. site, no, but once the E.f.W. is demolished and the scrap yard has been moved to a new location, the site of the old E.f.W. will form part of the new sewage treatment works.

Deputy J.H. Young:

This is providing you get your funding.

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure: Providing, yes.

The Deputy of St. Martin :

Providing we get you your funding. [Laughter]

The Connétable of St. John :

What exit policy was in place please for the previous operation?

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure: Sorry?

The Connétable of St. John :

What exit policy was in place for the previous operator and within that policy, was there anything in writing about a clean-up at the end of the lease?

Chief Officer:

Well, the contract with Picot and Rouillé was a lease contract and there are mechanisms within that about how you withdraw from a site and how you leave a site, yes, and that is currently being discussed with Picot and Rouillé.

Deputy J.H. Young:

So is that lease current at the moment?

Chief Officer:

Well, the lease ended at the end of January. There is an extension to that lease I believe for Picot and Rouillé to remove their material from the site.

Deputy J.H. Young:

So there are ongoing discussions.

Chief Officer: Yes.

Deputy J.H. Young: Who are those with?

Chief Officer:

It is between the law officers, ourselves, Picot and Rouillé and Picot and Rouillé's lawyers.

Deputy J.H. Young:

So you are currently having a discussion about exit arrangements?

Chief Officer:

We are indeed, yes.

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services:

Is there a timeline that you can tell us where they have to have the site cleared?

Chief Officer: It was ...

Director of Operations:

We are still in discussions with Picot and Rouillé. As the Chief Officer alluded to, Picot and Rouillé are allowed to operate until the end of their lease which was 24th December because they still had some materials on site. They did a shipment I believe that was at the beginning of December. They shipped a lot of their material from the site but obviously there are still metals there from what they received in December. We granted them initially, I believe, a 3-month extension on that

site but the Chief Officer is quite right to say we are still having those discussions to agree the time

when Picot and Rouillé is effectively vacating that site and are able to certainly move on all their materials as well as their machinery that they have on site.

The Connétable of St. John :

In my time in the days of public services when we had the highs and lows in the industry when you were shipping materials, there were certain fundings put aside by the operator which were put in to, shall we say, a joint account with the States and with Picot and Rouillé. Was there any stipulation for where that funding went and how it would be spent?

Director of Operations:

At the moment, certainly for those issues, we are in discussions with the law officers representing the States of Jersey and the lawyers representing Picot and Rouillé to discuss effectively the closure of that account.

Deputy J.H. Young:

Right, so that is part of the discussions that are ongoing. I think if you are agreeable, Connétable , I think we should note the fact that those discussions are ongoing.

The Connétable of St. John : Yes.

Deputy J.H. Young:

It may be something we may have to talk separately about.

The Connétable of St. John :

Yes, there are other items though that I want to know about.

Deputy J.H. Young: Yes, okay.

The Connétable of St. John :

What happened to the staff because we were given an undertaking back at the end of last year that a number of staff would be taken on by the new operators? What percentage of staff were taken over because we are told there quite a number that would be moving across? How many in fact did move across?

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services:

Director of Operations:

They have taken on 3 operators to effectively run the plant as well as an administrator and a site manager, so effectively there are only 5 staff that operate or run the scrap yard operation and certainly Hunts (Jersey) Limited would like to be taking on perhaps more staff in the future but, again, they might need a bigger site to be able to do that.

The Connétable of St. John : Right.

Director of Operations:

So, again, there will be small recycling done on site and more segregation between ferrous and non-ferrous within Jersey but, again, they need the space to be able to do that.

Chief Officer:

So effectively 3 staff are ex Picot and Rouillé.

The Connétable of St. John :

How many was there originally on the staff of Picot and Rouillé?

Director of Operations:

I think it could be as much as 10 but ...

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure:

Yes, I think it is 9 or 10. I think, again, if we extend the invitation to come and have a look, it is a very different operation now as to how it is currently running and it requires less staff.

The Connétable of St. John :

The new site, they will take more staff.

Deputy J.H. Young:

With a new site, what I am hearing and maybe we should be clear about this, at the moment, they are in interim mode.

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure: Correct.

Deputy J.H. Young:

They have a small site and they are constrained. Is that correct?

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure: That is exactly right.

Deputy J.H. Young:

They have taken on a small number.

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure: Yes.

Director of Operations: Yes.

Deputy J.H. Young:

But there is a preparedness to look at taking on more when the bigger site is available to them.

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure: Yes.

Director of Operations:

Certainly from our discussions with Hunts (Jersey) Limited, that is what their intentions are. They are taking on more staff once they get a bigger site.

Chief Officer:

We got boxed in a position where we did not feel as though Picot and Rouillé could exit the site in a timely fashion. We had nowhere else to go and we made this decision to locate on the Energy from Waste plant site which was a huge challenge in the timeframe we had but what it did was provide us a scrap yard for Jersey and commenced the contract which, again, as the Director of Operations alluded to, makes a massive difference environmentally to us as an Island. But it means because we are boxed in, that we cannot take on as many staff as we originally envisaged from the previous operator.

Deputy J.H. Young:

But if you were doing the ash separation in to the metal separation and so on, presumably, could that be dealt with as part of the contracts?

Chief Officer: Yes, possibly, yes.

The Connétable of St. John :

So as it is running at the moment in the 6 weeks of its operation, is it appearing to be cost- effective?

Chief Officer: Cost-effective for whom?

The Connétable of St. John :

Well, for moving the products off the Island.

Director of Operations:

We had our first meeting with Hunts (Jersey) Limited at the beginning of February and that was a monthly review meeting and they are very pleased with that tonnage that they have shipped out of the Island to date, so things are progressing well but it is still early days and I am afraid you have to give them time, as with the bus contract, just for those companies to gain their momentum.

Chief Officer:

Just to clarify, when people present scrap to the scrap yard, they are getting paid for it.

The Connétable of St. John :

Yes, while you are mentioning that, I note that if the Parish of St. John , St. Mary or indeed any of the Parishes take scrap vehicles to the scrap yard, they are required to produce the log book or something similar. Is that correct?

Chief Officer:

No, that is not the case.

The Connétable of St. John :

What is the case because there is concern out there by people who have old vehicles they want to get shot of that have been around for an awful long time cluttering up the countryside?

Chief Officer:

I think that is an urban myth that has developed in the U.K. To avoid stolen vehicles being presented at scrap yards, there is the issue of logbooks but, within Jersey, there is no requirement ... if you have a logbook, that is great but any form of signatory and proof of identity is enough for you to present a vehicle to the scrap yard.

The Connétable of St. John :

Will you make sure that that is publicised?

Chief Officer: Yes.

The Connétable of St. John :

Because that needs to be. The public need to know because there is concern.

Chief Officer:

Yes. Once a vehicle is received at the scrap yard, then all the V.I.N. (Vehicle Identification Number) numbers and all the data is taken from that vehicle and passed over to D.V.S. anyway so they really close the loop.

Deputy J.H. Young:

Presumably with the new extra space they have there will be more opportunity for recycling of parts and so on, will there?

Chief Officer:

Yes. Within Bellozanne, we are just converting one of the sheds opposite to store some of the more valuable materials and some of the materials for recycling but the company, at the moment, is looking at a more sort of U.K.-wide network for spares and for spares shipping. Yes, the new scrap yard, whether it is at the old scrap yard or a new location, will provide more facilities to recycle more things in a better way.

Director of Operations:

They have started selling spare parts during January and are putting parts up on the website as well, so people can see the spares that they have.

The Connétable of St. John :

What about the waste oils and the waste water from radiators, from air-conditioning units, et cetera? What is happening to that? Has it been treated?

Chief Officer:

We told them we have moved on the de-pollution where you can treat it as per their waste management plan, so waste oils tend to get burnt in either heating systems or recycled and then the waste waters and glycol and stuff will all go, the sewerage ...

The Connétable of St. John :

Then the fuel, things like petrol, how is that disposed of?

Chief Officer:

I am not sure how they dispose of fuel, probably a bit of burners and heaters as well, I would suggest.

Deputy J.H. Young:

Right, I apologise for coming back to it again but a target date for getting all of the new contract fully implemented and its new facilities and so on and everything is settled down, what would you commit yourself to time wise?

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure: Quarter 3 2014.

Chief Officer:

Just to clarify that slightly, it is subject to remediation on the existing site if we go back to the existing site and it is also subject to planning environmental impacts, and we know what they are like.

Deputy J.H. Young:

The remediation of the existing site is part and parcel of that project, is it?

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure:

If we go back to the old scrap yard with this remediation you will have to have them there. If we go elsewhere then it is a different issue but we cannot start any construction work until 2014, we do not have the money. Basically this year it is about doing a feasibility, getting the necessary approvals for wherever we are going to go to, gain the money in 2014, build it in 6 months and then further reports for commissioning and removing.

Deputy J.H. Young:

You do not see any problem in talking to the Minister for Treasury and Resources about all these

fiscal stimulus plans about bringing expenditure forward.

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure:

We are already nearly sort of in the first quarter of this year. We have to complete the feasibility, we have to prep up a planning application, which is depending on where it goes, probably an environmental impact assessment and then we have over 3 months determination. To be on site in January of next year is already going to be fairly ambitious.

Deputy J.H. Young:

Would this be local contract work or would ...?

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure: Yes, definitely.

Chief Officer: Definitely.

Deputy J.H. Young:

It would be if fiscal stimulus does not work.

Chief Officer: Yes.

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure:

Yes. We are talking about basically a big concrete slab with some buildings on it, it is an infrastructure now. We are going to design that in-house and then we will be going out to all our contractors.

The Deputy of St. Martin :

But do you have to do an environmental impact study if you went back to the old site?

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure:

Very likely because it will be a new planning ... it is already designated as a waste site, so we are within the actual planning requirements but we need an environmental impact assessment, waste- working plan, et cetera, under the new regulations

The Deputy of St. Martin : Which new regulations?

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure:

All the waste regulations now which did not exist when that site first set up.

The Connétable of St. John :

The remediation, given that you still have the old operator on that site, when do you expect to have that site back and have everything settled with the previous operator?

Chief Officer:

This is probably beyond the scope of this in some respects but I think the interpretation of the environmental study that was done and the contamination report that we have seen is coming next week, is it?

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure:

This week, Thursday. The previous operator allowed us on to do a site investigation last year. We have been on it and we have done a test of what is happening, what is on the site and what is below the slab. We are getting a presentation from consultants on Thursday as to what that actually is and the potential cost for the clean up on that site. We will be doing that with our law officers and then they will be continuing any discussions with the ...

Deputy J.H. Young:

I think I am going to close that subject if we can and then move on. Talking about sites and so on I think brings us nicely to this drawing which the Scrutiny Officer has kindly made available to us, which I think came from you in the first place.

Chief Officer: Probably, yes.

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure: It would have done, yes.

Deputy J.H. Young:

We are going to talk to you about what opportunities there are to set aside some area, a small area of land, in that vast area of your sort of backyard of "activities", if I may say so, to support private sector skip-recycling operators. Would you like to say yes and tell us when?

Chief Officer:

I think, as I suggested at our last gathering, it would be very opportunist to have a visit and one of

the facts that, I think, was alluded to today, recent surveys have shown that the land available has

diminished over the last few years because we have been digging the site out for some of the engineering works that has been undertaken there, so we have even less land than we had before. If land becomes available one of the things you have to think about is, exactly as it is for the scrap operator, the requirement from the Environmental Department will be for an impermeable surface with an interceptor on it and enough infrastructure there to protect the environment. That will cost money to put in. First off, it is not just a piece of La Collette which we put a bit of barbed wire around and give to an operator. This will need to be engineered properly, otherwise you will not be allowed to operate on it because protecting that environment, we have our house in order now, we monitor it closely, we have people who make sure that we stay honest on that. If anybody starts doing stuff at La Collette that is not in those controlled positions then ...

Deputy J.H. Young:

The assumption was that it would be subject to proper control and obviously the purposes of so doing.

Chief Officer:

But it is not just an area of land, it is also the capital to invest in that land to provide adequate facilities for anybody to operate a waste operation within that facility.

The Deputy of St. Martin :

But surely you have to accept that if there is an industry on the Island which requires a slab with an interceptor and all the concrete and everything else, regardless of where it is, it should really have that.

Chief Officer:

It should have that, yes.

The Connétable of St. John :

The Island have said for a long time they want to recycle. They have made it clear through the Environment Department, through the States. They have said they want to recycle and for quite a long time now your department have been trying to encourage people to recycle and yet we are not giving them the right facilities, the interceptors, the slabs, et cetera. You want the recycling and yet you will not provide the necessary slab without the necessary funding. Surely the funding will come out of your investment by the return you will get on the rent on that site.

Chief Officer:

Okay, first of all, T.T.S. are not property developers, Property Holdings does the ... if there is any

investment and return it is their prerogative to do that.

The Connétable of St. John :

Can I stop you there a moment. Property Holdings have only been around for a short period of time. This has been ongoing for a number of years. We have been promoting the recycling through P. and E., through T.T.S. and through the States. Therefore, we cannot say that Property Holdings are doing this, that and the other. This goes back prior to yourself and to previous Ministers and C.E.O.s (Chief Executive Officers), et cetera. Therefore, we have known that this is on the table, so we cannot use Property Holdings as an excuse. Yes, it is there now but it is for us to turn around and say: "We have to supply this."

Chief Officer:

Okay. In terms of recycling, recycling at source is the best recycling and I think your Parish leads the way on doing that. It will be very good to see commercial enterprise doing that as well so the mixed skip becomes a thing of the past. Now, that is something that can be achieved with the right enthusiasm and leverage in an industry, so that is one point to bear in mind. The light commercial sector in Jersey has been woefully not provided for in the Island Plan. There is lots of light industrial potential within Jersey but it is not being delivered. La Collette always seems to be the place where everybody thinks everything can go but La Collette is very congested. If the States want to set a piece of land aside at La Collette we can do so but there will be a consequence to that because there will be something else down there which is either oversize vehicles, some of our operations or some other operation that is strategically part of that will have to be moved away.

Deputy J.H. Young:

Would you like to expand, if I can just ask the Chief Officer to expand about the comment made about light industrial sites?

Chief Officer:

Yes, I am not aware in the Island Plan there is any light industrial sites designated in the latest Island Plan. The operation of skip-sorting is an ideal light industrial application but I am not aware of any ... there has always been very poor provision for light industrial within Jersey. It is a shame because there are a lot of housing areas that are blighted by light industrial activity and it has been there through longer periods of time. What I would say is La Collette appears to be the perfect place for all these things and if it needs to go there, it needs to go there. But La Collette is not the panacea and the huge expansive area that people perhaps believe that it is.

Deputy J.H. Young:

No, I suppose my comments were light hearted there but there must be synergy though between the solid waste management activities that take place at La Collette and recycling activities.

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure:

Just to put it into context, the actual area available there at the moment, yes, there are very small areas of actual available land at the moment. As the Chief Officer said, in past years we have dug out significant areas that we filled to build to take muck, for ash cells, to create the La Collette ... the hill which deals with Energy from Waste plants, so we have not created any new areas. The current industries in recession means we are not getting as much material in. We are recycling more so we are not creating new areas of space. We have a relatively small area of land. The potential uses which we are considering to go there, over this year and next year, we are talking about automatic recycling via a significant concrete slab and everything that goes with that. We are considering a scrap yard possibly, as we have spoken about, possible green waste reception, future recycling centre. Those are all active things down there. There is the actual road networking and infrastructure that has to service those but over and above that you can only put activities down within there that fit within the hazards review or within the hazards requirements of Buncefield, so there are lots of varying requirements down there. The Gas Company are approaching us for land for potential centralising of their activities and it is not as big as it looks, the site. I think, as the Chief Officer said, the site visit will demonstrate that the areas there just are not available.

Deputy J.H. Young:

Are you working with planning officers on that list of uses you gave there, trying to produce a forward plan for the use of that site?

Chief Officer:

Yes, that is the key thing, yes.

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure:

Yes. I spoke to planning officers about a masterplan of the area following the holiday and we are meeting with the Chief Officer and his officers.

[16:15]

I think it is in about 2 weeks' time, to have a look and talk about the overview of La Collette as a whole.

Deputy J.H. Young:

Perhaps this is his view, is the Minister for Planning and Environment up to speed with this? Is he supportive of that process? It seems to me very sensible.

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services: I am quite sure he is ...

Chief Officer:

I do not want to speak for the planning officers, Minister.

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure:

Because we have got a number of projects going on in parallel we are approaching the planning officers first to gauge their views and then we move on to planning requirements, E.I.A. (Environment Impact Assessment) requirements and to see whether they feel that they need an S.P.G. (Supplementary Planning Guidance) or masterplan of the area. If they do then we will work with them to produce that and that Planning also will be involved in that process.

Deputy J.H. Young:

Okay, well thank you for that.

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services:

It is a lot of communication officer-wise within the various departments.

Deputy J.H. Young:

No, I think that what you said seems very sensible for me.

The Connétable of St. John :

Yes, that is fine but we still have not got to the bottom of, what are we going to do with the remainder of Bellozanne when the plants have been moved, shall we say, or a huge scrap yard wherever it goes?

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure:

Again, part of the discussions which we will be having with the Chief Officer of Planning and his staff in the coming weeks also includes an overall long-term proposal for Bellozanne.

The Connétable of St. John :

That will work in conjunction with the site.

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure:

It will, we will dovetail it together. We are aiming to complete a feasibility study for the new sewerage treatment works by end of March this year. That will include our ambitions for where we will lay it in and out and how the site will be reused once there is activities in the ground.

Chief Officer:

There will be land available at Bellozanne. Obviously, if we can redevelop the sewerage works in the way that we would like to, it is ...

The Connétable of St. John :

Are the 2 of them dovetailed together?

Chief Officer:

It is a function of funding but our ambition is to do exactly that and it will potentially free light industrial land up in Bellozanne but it is long term, it is not short term.

The Deputy of St. Martin :

If you are considering a masterplan for La Collette, can I ask how many years forward you are looking?

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure:

At this stage it is not for us to produce a masterplan, that is a Planning activity. We have spoken to them to say that we have got a lot of ideas and thoughts around that. Their requirement for a masterplan will be if there is a requirement to do one, they will do one. It is not on their actual activity list. Our meeting with them, which talks about some potential changes, may prompt them to produce that masterplan for us to work within and others. If that is the case the masterplan will need to be produced over, I would like to think, by the end of this year if they are going to produce it. Looking forward, the masterplan is probably ... I think that more than 10 years is probably ...

The Deputy of St. Martin :

Could I just ask the Minister, does your vision of a masterplan for La Collette include a new harbour inside the wall?

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services: A new harbour inside the wall?

The Deputy of St. Martin :

A new harbour inside the perimeter of the La Collette area.

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services: Not at this stage.

Deputy J.H. Young:

No, I think perhaps we said the ...

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure:

I think that is a previous scheme which was progressed by W.E.B. (Waterfront Enterprise Board) in their previous format. It was not a scheme which T.T.S. promoted, we just provided information towards that.

Deputy J.H. Young:

I think we should note there is a feasibility study about to start and I think we should certainly be coming back to this subject again. I think what you have said to us is potentially there could be space available on either site but there needs to be a coherent plan to dovetail all these uses in and obviously solid-waste skip operators are part of that.

Chief Officer:

Just to finish on the harbour within La Collette, with the rate of fill we have at the moment that decision is not a rushed decision now because that part of La Collette is a good while off in terms of the fill rate we are currently seeing.

Deputy J.H. Young:

What is your fill rate for the record?

Chief Officer:

It is quite negative I think, is it not, over the last ...

Deputy J.H. Young: Sorry? It is negligible.

Chief Officer:

It is negative because we have been digging it out faster than it has come in.

Deputy J.H. Young:

You are minus for the old ... our construction industry when it was doing well.

Chief Officer:

Yes. Our job is to not fill La Collette because it is a strategic asset for the island of Jersey and we are doing really well at that, probably too well in some respects but I think from a property perspective and land-use perspective there is a counterview for us where waste management and recycling is our key focus and our job is to not fill it and we are doing a good job.

The Deputy of St. Martin :

Is it true you are digging it out deliberately so we cannot have a site for our skips? [Laughter]

Deputy J.H. Young:

Right. I think now we are going to move on, hopefully, to the perennial subject of roads. I think, Steve, you want to lead us on this.

The Deputy of St. Martin :

Yes. Minister, I am sure you will remember, Minister, I asked you a question recently about road resurfacing in 2013. One of the sites you mentioned in your answer was Rue des Prés and I just wonder if you could clarify a couple of things for me and us in particular. Is the resurfacing of Rue des Prés still going ahead?

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services:

That is Rue des Prés Trading Estate, not Rue des Prés which is the road alongside.

The Deputy of St. Martin :

Yes, that is right. No, I apologise, Rue des Prés Trading Estate and if it is going ahead, can you clarify exactly which parts of the Trading Estate are owned by the public?

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services:

That is subject to a survey at the moment that, I think, the Director of Engineering and Infrastructure does everything.

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure:

I can answer that, we are currently planning to resurface Rue des Prés in 2014. We have got a group together that is working with Property Holdings and to review the actual ownership of the people who tenant in there. A lot of them have taken over areas which were not originally part of their leases. Some of them have been in and created car-parking spaces for themselves which was not originally on their land now. The Trading Estate was probably built with not enough car- parking spaces, is the simple answer. It was built with quite a lot of landscaped areas that, over

the years, have been changed and taken but at the moment the status quo is just about right as

you speak to me but it is probably just there are not enough spaces. I think our general thoughts on all this is that what we would do is we would speak to all of the tenants in there, if they are willing and they are willing to adjust their leases to take the space which they currently have, we would probably let them have them and their rents will be adjusted. When we come to resurface and we do repair work we would adjust the lines and the curves and in some cases we have got pavements down both sides of the road, but we could lose one. We would adjust them to suit what has become the norm in the estate.

The Deputy of St. Martin :

To be quite clear, you are saying that the whole of Rue des Prés Trading Estate roads is owned by the public of the Island.

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services: It is the roads itself, as far as I know.

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure: The roads itself, correct.

The Deputy of St. Martin :

Right, so we would be resurfacing the public roads.

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure:

We would be resurfacing public roads but, at the same time, what we would try and do is try and go and sort out the problem, the parking issue is the problem now for 20 years.

The Deputy of St. Martin :

Okay. Minister, I took the liberty of driving around Rue des Prés Trading Estate the other day and it occurs to me that we have public roads, major public main roads on the Island which are in far worse condition than the Rue des Prés Trading Estate and I just wonder how it is that we find ourselves in this situation where we are going to be spending money at Rue des Prés for, I agree, a number of people who work there but when we have major roads around the Island in far worse condition that are being travelled on by much greater numbers of the public of Jersey.

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services:

There have been quite a few problems, as the Director of Engineering and Infrastructure has mentioned, in Rue des Prés. The cars originally parked obviously kerbside and now they are starting to park herring-bone style and encroaching on to the States road. As the Director of

Engineering and Infrastructure said, when Rue des Prés was built there was insufficient car

parking and everyone has cars now, so that is one part of the problem. The entrance to Rue des Prés, believe it or not, last year we were short of water and the tree roots were chasing water all over the place and we had quite a few roots coming up in the road, pavements, all the way along the main entrance. Have you got the condition of the rest of it?

Director of Transport:

I will just add a little bit to that, just from my previous role. While I have got some sympathy obviously for what you say there has been ongoing maintenance costs at Rue des Prés dealing with the problem about the tree roots, of course, down there, particularly we have done quite a lot of work in the past to stop trip hazards and other issues, we had tree roots getting into drains and knocking down walls and the like.

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure:

I think in answer to the question, the roads are all part of the main road network and they come up for care and they get surveyed as all the other ones do. They are in poor condition, they have not been resurfaced since they were laid probably, guessing, 25 to 30 years ago, which is about our average resurfacing programme. Rue des Prés, it was originally to go about 5 years ago and it has kept being putting off. We are still aiming for 2014 but I think what we are finding now with the legal issues down there and the potential multi-terms negotiations working out that we may not hit that. But in terms of the requirements to do them it just falls into the same category and the same consideration when we are selecting other roads to do.

The Deputy of St. Martin :

I just find it difficult driving around the countryside. We have areas in Trinity and in St. John and in St. Saviour that I can think of which appear to me ... when you are driving it is bad enough but when you get out and walk on them, Minister, the roads around the Island are falling apart and I am just terrified to think what they are going to be like in 5 or 6 years' time.

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure:

We have had 2 or probably 3 now really bad winters which have significantly damaged the roads.

Deputy J.H. Young: Come on.

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure:

If we continue on with that sort of significant rain and freezing then we will look at those if they continue to be damaged. But our annual programme is about £3 million to £4 million that we have

got going forward now for road resurfacing. It is £3 million short of what we need each year. We

have been working with Treasury for many years now to try and get that figure up to what is required and Treasury have helped us gradually increase our funding requirement but we are not there yet. To prevent that deterioration getting worse in all the areas that you note, and I am sure we will get from people as soon as they drive around, more funding is required.

Deputy J.H. Young:

But did you not get something from the M.T.F.P. (Medium-Term Financial Plan)? I thought you had got an improvement in these infrastructure budgets.

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure:

We did but not for highway resurfacing. Effectively, it is an average of £3.5 million for the next 3 years for highway resurfacing and that will do about 3 to 4 resurfacing projects a year.

Deputy J.H. Young: That has not changed.

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure:

But moving forward from that, from 2018 onwards, in the long-term capital programme, that additional £3 million has been highlighted.

The Deputy of St. Martin :

The wording that I recollect from the M.T.F.P. was that the money that you have been given is to maintain the roads in the condition that they currently are in.

Chief Officer: Correct.

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure: Yes, that is correct.

The Deputy of St. Martin :

I would strongly put it to you that the £3.5 million or whatever it might be is not getting anywhere near maintaining the roads in the condition they are currently in because there are just so many roads that are deteriorating on a daily/weekly basis.

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure: We have got 167 miles of roads ...

The Connétable of St. John : Can I come in there?

Deputy J.H. Young:

Let the Director of Engineering and Infrastructure finish.

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure:

We are doing 3 or 4 resurfacing projects a year. I have got some little maps here and this will show you the colours of the areas but the Island's road network is significantly deteriorating.

Deputy J.H. Young: It is under-funded.

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure:

The damage has been done over the last probably 10 to 15 years when the resurfacing funding has gone down and down and down. Certainly in my time and the Constable's time there has been a lot of campaigning for increased money and I think we are now sort of going back up again. Yes, we have got almost the required money or we have got the required money.

The Deputy of St. Martin :

Was it not part of the tax of vehicles, was it V.R.D. (Vehicle Registration Duty) or something taken specifically to maintain road surfaces?

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure: No, that was never ring-fenced.

Deputy J.H. Young:

Can I just put this on hold, I just want to check this because this comes up all the time. I think we need to be clear, are the roads deteriorating and are we falling behind or are we keeping up with what the ... at least there is an arrears of work, you have told us that, that has been a long- standing situation, are we keeping pace or are we getting worse?

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure:

In general terms the level of funding we got is keeping us at a level playing field, we are not getting worse.

The Connétable of St. John :

Can I come in there? You are telling us that to keep where we are we need to spend £3.5 million a year just to resurface, correct?

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure: Correct.

The Connétable of St. John :

And yet you were telling us a few moments ago that you were going to take the opportunity, while you are at Rue des Prés, to re-engineer the entire site by taking out footpaths, et cetera. We saw what happened when you did Victoria Avenue. There was nothing wrong with it other than being resurfaced. You totally re-engineered it at a massive extra cost when probably another mile of road in this Island could have been done. That was re-engineered because we were told at the time: "This is the way to go." What you are just telling us, you are going to re-engineer Rue des Prés Trading Estate at the cost of probably another mile of road in another part of the Island. What is it? Are we standing still or we are going backwards because we are re-engineering while we are on the sites?

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure:

I think Victoria Avenue and Rue des Prés are 2 different issues. Victoria Avenue, apart from having significant problems with the road structure and the resurfacing itself, had other infrastructures on that road which needed replacing and while the road resurfacing was being done and the closure of the road was to prevent disruption and that infrastructure was carried out at the same time, so kerbs were replaced, drainage was replaced, services were replaced and speed ramps were replaced. All our resurfacing projects which we do now we are trying to do what we call route improvement, also once we come off that section of road because we are not going back now probably for 20 to 30 years. We are looking to do all of that as we go part through that. That is what happened at ...

The Connétable of St. John :

Excuse me, can I stop you? That is not happening. Your people have been returning to Queen's Road within 5 years of it being resurfaced because the manhole covers are breaking up.

[16:30]

I saw it again yesterday, you have done repairs there in the last 12 months, coming down yesterday I saw at least 3 manhole covers with all the asphalt broken around them. For redoing ...

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure:

Unfortunately the problem with Queen's Road is the actual drainage line where the manholes are built, it is right in the wheel path and it is a very difficult issue there which we have not come to terms with in terms of repairing it completely.

The Connétable of St. John :

But if you are re-engineering as you are going along, why is it breaking up? Sorry, your arguments are not stacking up because if you are not supposed to return for 20 years and you returned already within 4 years and, again, it needs to go back in the fifth year ...

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure:

On any road we will not return to do the resurfacing within those years but we will certainly be returning within 5 to 10 years to be doing patches and repairs. We are only taking off the surface and we ... I mean that will not extend the life of a road for 30 years.

Deputy J.H. Young:

Yes, can I just come in? You have told us we are breaking even, despite the individual reservations on individual roads, we are keeping pace. But you have also told us we are well short of what we really need to spend. How much extra money would it require to improve things?

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure:

It requires an additional £3 million to get a hold of that ...

Deputy J.H. Young:

Is it £3 million or nothing or would another £1 million make a difference, for example?

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure: Every bit of money would help.

Deputy J.H. Young:

Right, and that is spent locally.

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure: It is all spent locally.

Deputy J.H. Young:

By local contractors, local workers.

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure: Yes, local contractors ...

Deputy J.H. Young:

Are you in conversations with the Minister for Treasury and Resources about this fiscal stimulus and so on?

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure: We are.

Deputy J.H. Young:

Would it be true that if we do fall behind we have to spend more money later on because the roads deteriorate?

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure: Absolutely, yes.

The Connétable of St. John :

How can we help you make it happen?

The Deputy of St. Martin :

Stop driving up and down Queen's Road for a start. [Laughter]

Deputy J.H. Young: Right, I think ...

The Connétable of St. John :

What would you want this Scrutiny Panel to do to help you get more funds?

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure:

The Medium-Term Financial Plan capital allocation, the bottom line, was only agreed for the following year. It is the detail of what is in that capital programme for 2014 and 2015 that has not been agreed.

Chief Officer: It is indicative.

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure:

It is indicative. If you could do anything, waiting for the rounds of the budget debate, to influence a shift of that indicative capital to come more to T.T.S. for road resurfacing or infrastructure, we would be very happy and ...

Deputy J.H. Young:

Okay, we hear what you say and I hold in the meantime you should ... we think that you should be talking to the Minister for Treasury and Resources about these things.

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure:

To be fair to the Treasury we are in constant discussions with the Minister for Treasury and Resources and his other officers.

Deputy J.H. Young:

Because infrastructure is supposed to be the theme of ... and what I find surprising is when we had the debate on the M.T.F.P.: "Oh, it is wonderful, it is wonderful, we are spending on infrastructure" and what happens?

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure: But we have had some increase in funding.

Deputy J.H. Young:

In these meetings, when we get down to brass tacks, we find, no, it is not like that.

Chief Officer:

But just to bear in mind the term "infrastructure" and if you look at the M.T.F.P. and the other capital allocations it is hospital allocations and things like that, you need to pull one to feed one in. If you look at the inundation we have had in our drainage network, if you looked at our priorities as T.T.S. as of today it is to stop that infiltration, so ...

Deputy J.H. Young:

Let us be clear, all this money is spent locally, is it not, with local contractors?

Chief Officer:

It is all spent locally, it is, but I am just saying it is not sexy what we do. It is not politically exciting and we generally lose when it comes to the battle.

The Deputy of St. Martin :

It is fairly politically exciting unless the toilet is not working.

Chief Officer: It is, yes.

Deputy J.H. Young:

The wet winter, an exceptionally wet winter, is that going to make any difference to the level of costs that you have got?

Chief Officer: Yes.

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure:

We are spending over and above the major resurfacing contracts, which are bigger contracts. We spend around about £400,000 on patching, which is small stuff that is basically just repairing the roads we come around to do that resurfacing. That figure has increased probably 30 per cent over the last 3 winters and will continue if we have the same heavy rainfall and cold temperatures.

Deputy J.H. Young: Okay, thank you. I am ...

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services:

Talking of infrastructure, we are also doing the Phillip Street shaft which is a major project.

Deputy J.H. Young:

Okay, right, yes. I am going to close the discussion on that.

The Connétable of St. John :

Just before you finish that one, Chairman, Treasury have found a way of, my words, raping Social Security funds. Why have you not found a way, Minister, of getting additional funds from one of the other departments?

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services:

I am glad they are your words, Constable. As I say, we deal directly with Treasury and I say we are in discussions at present over various other things and I would not dream of demanding that we take money from Social Security or indeed from the Health Service. I do not think that is quite the right way to go. Any extra money we require I think we should get from Treasury.

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure:

Yes, just one final note, we would say it is only probably 5 or maybe 6 years ago our road resurfacing budget was £600,000. We have been talking about our bids and our continued discussion with Treasury and support the Constables and Ministers around that our funding has gone up. We were right at the bottom and we have never cut down, we need to go back up.

Deputy J.H. Young:

But, with respect, that is what got us where we are, so I am not ...

Chief Officer:

We had 10 years of under-investment.

Deputy J.H. Young: Yes, quite.

Chief Officer:

You are not going to recover that for a long time.

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure:

What I would say is Treasury are playing closely with us in going forward and they are trying to balance what is a relative ...

Deputy J.H. Young:

If we can encourage you to keep the dialogue going, please, Minister.

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services: We are playing catch up and presume we are going well.

Deputy J.H. Young:

I think with that, unless my colleagues have got anything else to add to that. I think we have run out of time, we are 5 minutes overdue. I think with that I am going to ... unless you want to add anything, Minister, to what you have said.

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services: Do you have anything?

Director of Engineering and Infrastructure: No.

No. Chief Officer? I think we are fine. Thank you, Chairman.

Deputy J.H. Young:

I am going to formally close the meeting and thank you and your team for a very informative afternoon and helpful, very helpful.

The Minister for Transport and Technical Services: Thank you, Chairman.

[16:36]