Many aspects of the government’s harbours strategy are ’ill thought out’, a Tynwald committee report concludes.

Tynwald approved the harbour strategy in March last year.

It includes, as part of an £80m upgrade of Douglas harbour, plans for a £11m deep water berth development at Victoria Pier which could cater for 240m-long cruise ships.

More ambitious proposals for a 450m-long deepwater berth at Princess Alexandra Pier were rejected on cost grounds - but Infrastructure Minister Ray Harmer said he was not ruling out investment in a larger facility ’if the cruise business takes off’.

A report by the environment and infrastructure policy review committee, laid before this week’s Tynwald sitting, concludes that the process of delivering the strategy to parliament was ’premature’.

’During the debate, it became clear that many aspects of the strategy were ill-thought-out,’ it notes.

’The determination to focus on cruise ships through the Victoria Pier proposal means other opportunities have been closed off and not fully considered,’the report says.

All of the options need to be reconsidered and the appropriate studies completed before Tynwald can make an informed decision, it suggests.

The Victoria Pier proposal is based on ’a mistaken view of cost avoidance’ and as a result ’does not look to the future’, the report says.

There are costs to the Victoria Pier proposal that have not yet been fully determined and are subject to further studies on dredging, siltation, navigation, and tugs.

’We are not convinced that the Victoria Pier proposal offers such a significant cost saving as has been claimed,’ the committee says.

Flexibility

Restricting the size of the berth to the ’bare minimum’ does not offer much flexibility for the future.

A number of ports around the Irish Sea and British Isles have been extending their operations to 350m deep water berths.

Maintenance works for Douglas Harbour, costing about £10m, should be progressed as a matter of urgency, says the report.

The committee criticises the Department of Infrastructure for lacking the capacity to make strategic decisions of this nature.

Instead, it recommends that the Council of Ministers should appoint a body to conduct a strategic review of the island’s harbours and options for further development.

’The Victoria Pier proposal reflects the government’s wider lack of capacity to think, plan, and budget strategically,’ says the committee.