In brief: The Parish of St Helier has voted unanimously to buy a former plastics supplier’s premises at 30-32 Devonshire Place for £1.85 million, plus fees and stamp duty bringing the total to £1.965 million. A further £300,000 has been approved for refurbishment, giving the parish’s 28-strong street cleansing team a permanent home after decades of making do.
A “Temporary” Fix That Lasted Thirty-Odd Years
If you have ever wondered what a temporary arrangement looks like in Jersey, the Parish of St Helier’s cleansing team has the answer. Following a landslide at Westmount Quarry in the 1990s, the team was relocated to Lempriere Street on what was described, with characteristic optimism, as a temporary basis. Three decades later, the Jersey Evening Post reports, the 28 employees are still there, operating from what Constable Inna Gardiner describes as “a converted house that is no longer fit for purpose.”
The parish’s head of infrastructure, Silvio Alves, told the JEP that the search for new premises had taken “many years.” Given the timeline, that may be something of an understatement.
The New Home: From Precision Plastics to Parish Depot
The chosen site, 30-32 Devonshire Place, was previously occupied by Precision Plastics, which has since become part of Coda and relocated to St John. The building’s industrial heritage makes it a practical fit for a cleansing operation that needs space, accessibility and a central location in town.
Constable Gardiner explained to the JEP that small industrial buildings in the middle of St Helier are hard to come by, which goes some way to explaining why the search dragged on for so long. The new site, she said, “would provide a modern, purpose-built operational base with improved staff welfare facilities, safer working conditions and capacity to support the service into the future as we are developing our commercial offer.”
At the parish’s annual general meeting last month, parishioners voted unanimously to approve both the purchase and a £300,000 refurbishment budget. The total outlay, once fees and stamp duty are included, comes to £1.965 million. A separate proposition to sell 5 and 7 Lempriere Street and put the proceeds towards the Devonshire Place purchase was withdrawn, meaning the parish will need to fund the acquisition through other means.
What It Means for St Helier
The cleansing team is one of those services that residents notice only when it falls short. Keeping St Helier’s streets presentable is no small task, and doing it from a building that is no longer fit for purpose makes the job harder for staff and, ultimately, for the parish as a whole. The move to Devonshire Place should give the team the facilities and space to operate more effectively.
The withdrawal of the Lempriere Street sale proposition is worth noting. It leaves open the question of what happens to those properties and how the parish intends to finance the purchase in the near term. The JEP does not report any further detail on that point.
Source: Jersey Evening Post
