The promenade will not be left looking like a construction site next year despite its £25m revamp not being completed, a Tynwald committee was told.

A revised end date for the scheme of March 2021 has been announced.

But it means that certain key elements have been removed from the first phase of the contract.

The horse tramway will stop short, roundabouts will be built without granite and the Department of Infrastructure will now do the pedestrian crossings and the side streets.

Work will begin again with a second phase in the winter of 2021-22 to complete the horse tram line south to the Sea Terminal and to finish the roundabouts at the bottom of Broadway and Church Road with block paving.

But there are no costings for this second phase.

Giving evidence to a Tynwald scrutiny committee, new Infrastructure Minister Tim Baker said: ’I’ve got a clear philosophy that we need to get it finished for the end of March next year to free up the promenade for a good, vibrant visitor season next year.

’We had to make some changes in order to hit that target. We made the decision to take the single track down to the Sea Terminal out of the initial scope of the project in order that we could deliver the scheme.

’I want to make it absolutely clear that I am committed to delivering that element of the scheme. That was the express will of Tynwald.’

He envisaged that work being done over the winter of 2021-22.

DoI chief executive Nick Black told the committee that the Promenade would not be left looking like a construction site for that summer.

He said: ’We are not going to leave it littered with cones and Heras fencing and excavators perched on 10m of rubble.

’It will look like the place you want to spend next summer’s holiday.’

Mr Black accepted that it will cost more to go back to the scheme to complete the horse tramway.

He said: ’Does it cost more to stop the scheme and start it again? Yes it does, I think that’s self-evident.

’We’ve got to take everything off and bring it back on. The contract will end and have to be restarted. So there will be additional cost for this. We haven’t let out a contract, we haven’t got a price.’

He said a business case has yet to go in but will show the plan to go back and finish the tramway later will be ’better for the economy as a whole’.

Mr Black said the rail laying may take 12 weeks, although Tadhg O’Mahoney, direct of contractors Auldyn, estimated five months for the work.

The route of the horse tramway, which will run right up against the wall of the sunken gardens between the Sea Terminal and the War Memorial, is currently covered in asphalt which will become a temporary lane.

But the asphalt will then be replaced with a form of planting such as meadow grass.

Mr Black said the DoI was looking at the idea of a ’green tramway’ for this southern section of the line, with the tracks laid on sleepers in ballast rather than in concrete, to allow plants to grow.

He said the scheme would be done in sequence ’like dominoes’ to limit the impact, moving along in 100-200m sections with parking taken out.

Light rail

Mr Black said in the long term, the new tracks may be used by modern trams as part of a possible light rail system running from Birch Hill to Farmhill.

’It would be a great way to move people around the island,’ he said.

Mr Black was asked whether the removal of works from the current contract would pay for the works yet to be done.

He said he would be negotiating with the contractor over the financial impact of the changes.

But he explained that the current contract allowed the final date and final price to change and the DoI had not been able to say to Treasury at any point to date what the final out-turn price is.

’They know what the bid is, they know what the contract is and we know what the budget is but it would be almost impossible to go for a supplementary vote, if one was needed, until a very late stage,’ he said.

Mr Black said the department had given a commitment that if there were additional costs, it would not seek to increase the budget. ’We’ll have to cut our cloth to fund this,’ he said.

The committee heard that the horse tramway would likely only reach Broadway by March 31 next year, rather than terminate at the War Memorial.

Alistair Burroughs, chairman of designers Burrows Stewart Associates, said the impact of Covid-19 has delayed the whole scheme by six to 10 weeks.

He said by late February /early March the contract was already effectively 18 weeks behind schedule.

Mr Burroughs was asked if an option was considered to continue with the horse tram line to the Sea Terminal during the summer of 2021.

He replied that the preference had been to complete the works on March 31.

Mr Burroughs said there was no ’slack’ in the project and the timeframe was ’extremely tight’.

He was asked why the scheme was not done in manageable sections rather than the whole prom being dug at once.

He replied that it was difficult to lay pipes and cables in short sections.