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StHBOA responds to Ports of Jersey's latest move to enforce parking charges on South Pier. You can review the Ports of Jersey Notice of intent and our initial response by clicking on the links below.
St Helier Boat Owners Response to the Increase in Mooring Fees 2024
In late November 2023 Ports of Jersey (PoJ) announced that mooring fees
would rise by 11.1% from 1 January 2024. This came on top of a fee increase of
over 10% in 2023.
Phil James organised an impromptu meeting for anybody
with an interest in the matter, which was well attended by people from all the
boat owning associations on the island.
At that meeting a grouping of
volunteers to represent the different boat owning associations agreed to work
together to lobby PoJ to reconsider the plan. A comprehensive rebuttal of the
arguments, statistics and inflation rates used in the PoJ announcement was sent
to PoJ. An exchange of correspondence with PoJ took place, and
the working party decided to raise a formal issue with the Jersey Competition
Regulatory Authority (JCRA) which has regulatory oversight for the conduct and
pricing policy of PoJ.
Phil James and Dave Garland, who had spearheaded the
initiatives to engage with PoJ and JCRA, joined the Committee of STHBOA at the
AGM on January 9 2024. The Harbour Master, Bill Sadler and CFO of PoJ, Jenny
Marek Murray, attended an open meeting immediately after the AGM to put forward
their rationales and justifications for the fee increase, and to hear the views
and take questions from those attending. At the end of the meeting they
undertook to consider revising the fee increase.
They had a follow up meeting with a sub committee of
SHBOA in mid January where they said they were willing to defer the increase by
3 months. They made it clear that any further reductions had been ruled out by
the CEO and Board of PoJ.
Whilst this was not as big a drop in the increase as we
had lobbied and argued for, it was clear that it did represent a benefit for
the majority of boatowners in St Helier, although it is important to highlight
that despite promises that the change would benefit all boat owners, those with
annual contracts in the old harbour, and the outlying harbours, with mid year
renewals have not actually received any benefit from the concession. Not withstanding that, we estimate that the value of the
concession through the deferral of the increase, has saved the boat owning
community around £100,000.
We believe that PoJ would not have offered the concession
without the resolute, carefully constructed and managed dialogue that was
undertaken by those from the boat owning community who worked on this. The correspondence trail on the saga is set out below :-
- announcement of fee increase by PoJ
- letter to PoJ rejecting the premises used to justify the increase dated 7th December 2023se
- letter of response from Harbour Master dated 18th December 24
- further letter to Harbour Master dated 21st December 24
- letter from JABOA to the Jersey Competition Regulatory Authority dated 22nd December 24.
- interim response from JCRA
- final response from JCRA dated 1st February, 24.
The issue of the sharp increase in mooring fees announced
by Ports of Jersey at the end of 2023 brought the community of boat owners
together to mount a campaign to lobby PoJ and the Jersey Consumer Regulatory
Authority to reconsider their plans. There are a number of different boat owners associations
representing the boat owning community of Jersey, and the associations decided
it would be beneficial if we banded together to be able to present a united
front on boating related matters in the future. As a consequence, StHBOA has entered a Memorandum of
Understanding to form an advocacy body called Jersey Association of Boat Owners
Associations (JABOA) with the following
groups :-
~ Bonne Nuit BOA
~ Bouley Bay BOA
~ Gorey BOA
~ Greve de Lecq BOA
~ La Rocque
BOA
~Rozel BOA
~ St Aubins BOA
JABOA will represent the interests of all the boat owners
in matters that affect.
Following the campaign that led to the deferral of the
increase in berthing fees, JABOA is about to initiate a campaign to the
Guernsey Border Authority on the new restrictions on private boats visiting
Sark and Herm.
Nobody wants to complain for the sake of it, however, sometimes it becomes necessary. It is not possible for your Association to deal with all the myriad of things that can go wrong. Whilst we welcome you sending us details and on most occasions we will take the matter up for discussion, it is important that you also send your complaints directly to Ports of Jersey. You will find the correct link on our Useful Links page, however for good measure we are repeating the process here. The complaints procedure on the Ports of Jersey Website is somewhat hidden. The easiest way to find the correct form and email address is to enter 'complaints' in their Website search box, however if you click on the following link you will be taken directly to their complaints procedure page:
Complaint Procedure For your convenience we have prepared a pro-forma email should you wish to utilise it. The proforma merely adds the correct email address and offers you the opportunity to share your complaint with us. Please access with this link Complaint Email
The Subject will be pre filled as 'Complaint', however please modify to give better detail. You will find that we have entered our own email address to the copy section. Please delete this, should you not wish to share your complaint with our members.
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