The Liberal Vannin Party says it is glad that ’common sense prevailed’ and that the Minister for Home Affairs has agreed to keep Ramsey courthouse in public ownership by accepting an offer from the town’s commissioners.

The party says the public response to the Minister’s ’short-sighted’ decision to sell off the building was to ’mobilise and make their views clearly known’.

Many people Ramsey and their MHKs campaigned against the original plan to sell the building to the private sector.

LibVan party chairman Roy Redmayne said: ’This is sending a clear message to this new administration that people on our island are expecting more from this government and they aren’t going to sit back and let decisions go unchallenged.’

The government last week accepted the commissioners’ offer for the building after the authority made a ’revised’ offer. The government says that this offer will now be put forward for consideration as part of the established process for the sale of its assets.

The thorny issue of what would happen with the courthouse has been rumbling on since early March.

On March 7 Home Affairs Minister Bill Malarkey MHK told the House of Keys that historic building had been put on the market that morning, at a price of £475,000.

Then he said that as minister he had a responsibility to the taxpayer to ensure that the government got the best price it could for the property.

The courthouse was on the market with estate agents Chrystals, who then described it as a ’unique opportunity to acquire a piece of Ramsey’s history’.

Mr Malarkey told MHKs there had been at least two expressions of interest and he was hopeful that a decision on a sale could be reached within the next two to three weeks.

But then Ramsey Commissioners got involved and a meeting of people from the town objected to the sale.

Then, on March 17, Ramsey Commissioners agreed to submit a formal offer to the Department of Home Affairs to buy the courthouse and grounds for £397,800.

The offer involved providing a 26-year rent-free lease of the police office within the town hall, for which the DHA currently pays £15,000 a year.

The subject was also raised in Tynwald and Mr Malarkey backtracked.

On March 21 in Tynwald he said: ’The process is in line with government regulations,’ Mr Malarkey told Tynwald.

’No decision has been taken at this time as to what is going to happen to Ramsey courthouse or the land.

’This has been an exercise of testing the water and testing whether there is interest. It has been extremely successful - and it has been extremely successful for the commissioners.

’We both have a clear direction of what people want.’

What the new commissioners’ offer is has not been made public.

And what the building will be used for is also not yet apparent.

The courthouse once housed the police as well as a courthouse. Later it was the town’s post office.