St Helena : St Helena EXCO REPORT – 29th June 2010
Submitted by Saint Helena Herald (Public Relations Information Office) 30.06.2010 (Article Archived on 14.07.2010)
All Elected members were present at this meeting of EXCO. Gilly Francis attended as Acting Chief Secretary and in the light of the absence of the Financial Secretary I invited Tony Kilner to attend in order to advise us on matters financial.
EXCO REPORT – 29th June 2010
All Elected members were present at this meeting of EXCO. Gilly Francis attended as Acting Chief Secretary and in the light of the absence of the Financial Secretary I invited Tony Kilner to attend in order to advise us on matters financial.
There were three items open to the public and there were four of them in attendance. The first was a paper from the Natural Resources, Development and Environment Committee recommending the disposal of Wranghams.
At present it is our policy to not sell any government houses known as Chief Secretary’s Housing. That policy was derived from the awareness that once a positive airport decision is made, then land values will escalate and we would be denying the public purse of capital gain if we were to sell prematurely. However, the airport remains in abeyance and some of the houses are deteriorating. Wranghams is known to be in an increasingly sorry state and the paper suggested that we make it an exception to the policy and offer it for sale.
This was agreed to, but there are matters relating to the method and type of sale, including selling a long term lease, that need resolution.
The second memorandum was an application from the St.Helena Canning Company for a 12 month licence under the Fish and Fish Products Marketing Regulations 2005. This was agreed to.
The third Paper was to do with the future of the new St.Helena News Media Board and included a timetable or routemap of the transition from a statutory board to a Company. The News Media (Amendment) Bill needs to be published for public consultation and it was felt that the routemap did not allow enough time to get the legislation in place for the next LEGCO. It was also agreed that more detailed consideration was required by the Home and International Committee and so the issue will pass back to them before coming before the next EXCO.
The closed session began with consideration of the minutes of the last meeting. You may recall that at our last meeting we asked for a tracker document to be provided by the clerk to ensure that all actions would be picked up. Such a document had been prepared and proved to be useful in saving time and increasing control. So successful is this mechanism that Members asked for a tracker to be prepared dating back to the first meeting of this Council in order to see that everything that has been agreed, has been done.
We then moved on to confirm that Saint FM should be granted a broadcasting licence to be able to use its existing fm frequencies for the next 5 years. Such a licence will of course be subject to adherence to whatever Code of Practice has been agreed.
The next memorandum concerned the granting of an Immigrant’s Landholding Licence to Mrs. Hazel Wilmot so that she can proceed with the acquisition of a house, and our final paper was the acceptance of a slightly revised schedule covering Remuneration and Allowances for Councillors. For that particular item all Councillors declared an interest.
Under Any Other Business we dealt with quite a few brief items. One concerned the clarification of a point raised in a recent letter to one of our newspapers. The issue is that in the past a Saint applying for a post that would normally be considered an ex-pat post, would have to work here on a Saint salary rather than an ex-pat one. This is obviously unfair and we were able to confirm that the salary for such a post will be the same whether the job holder is Saint or not and whether they have applied from the island or from abroad.
A question had been asked as to why the RMS has been delivering so much fuel to the BFI lately. The answer was given that it could have been cheaper overall, and less risky, to do so. However the fuel from the Jo tanker obviously comes at a lower cost and the RMS will only be used where the security of supply seems threatened.
I reminded Members that Kedell Worboys and Matt Young, who are both on the SHL Board will be visiting us from 14th July and so the promised public meeting on the shipping service will be held during that week.
We also discussed the current wave of concern over the services of the hospital. It was felt that the report of the panel on the single incident that had started that wave would be useful but that the feelings may have reached such a pitch that a deeper inquiry may be beneficial. The doctors have unanimously expressed to the Health & Social Services Committee and to me, that they would strongly welcomed such an inspection. All of us on this island must appreciate that the expectation we have of what our health service can actually do is very dependent on the resources that we have at our disposal. This matter will be receiving a great deal of attention over the next few weeks.
This meeting managed to get through the business at a reasonable pace and future weeks should see a sharpening of our system even further as the Council Committees get through their work of discussing virtually all of the issues that come before us.
The meeting finished at 1.55 pm.
Andrew Gurr Governor
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