30/01/2013 BBC Channel Islands News

Six weeks late and now Guernsey's government is facing legal action

over the airport runway redevelopment.

Also in the programme: Fewer burglaries and fewer drink drivers

Than the crime has come down. One in crime -- one in five crimes that

we don't have in the space of two years.

And despite being pumped full of taxpayers cash, ambitions for

Work on Guernsey's airport redevelopment project is around six

weeks behind schedule. That's according to a progress report out

today. The island's biggest capital project has been plagued by bad

weather and also seen the States conned out of millions of pounds.

Today it emerged the Government is also facing legal action from an

airport neighbour. Mike Wilkins reports.

Halfway through the project and it's been a testing 12 months.

First the rain arrived, causing significant delays. And then there

was the embarrassing loss of more than �2.5 million to fraudsters.

And now someone who lives near the airport is suing the States over

alleged damages caused by the airport refurbishment project.

have been involved in construction with a similar project but of a

much smaller scale. The day after we bought the land, I've talked to

the neighbours and told them what was going to happen and we

compensated them on day one. We agreed compensation on day one.

Nobody came round from the States to see us. The Public Services says

it offered to cover the costs of Mr Birnie's rent and relocation while

the work is going on. And that work is costing more than �80 million

while the runway is moved further west to bring it in line with

international safety standards. The Public Services Department has an

emergency fund of �10 million and, due to project delays, has been

forced to spend just under half of the money set aside. The project is

behind but the project manager has told me he is content that it will

finish on time and on budget. is my 37th each year in

construction and I have never known a year like it. Whenever we did a

whole now, the hole fills up with water. It adds that level of

complexity that normally we wouldn't get throughout the whole

There's been embarrassment, delays and now legal action. But despite

this, those responsible claim the job will be done on time and on

budget. The inquest of a seven-year-old

girl, who died after being hit by a quad bike has recorded a verdict of

accidental death. Mai-Lea Falla died in hospital following the

collision in November. The inquest today heard that she'd been carol

singing with a friend at the time of the accident. The police

concluded there was nothing that the quad bike rider could have done

to stop it happening. Crime in Jersey is falling,

according to the latest figures released by police. Overall crime

in 2012 was down 4%. There was also a significant drop in the number of

burglaries, compared with the previous year and fewer drink

drivers were caught on the Islands' roads. Gillian Martindale's been

taking a look at the figures. Jersey Police have released their

crime figures for 2012. Overall crime is down by 4%, which

represents 168 fewer crimes committed over the last 12 months.

But the man in charge says in two years they've cut crime by 20%.

focused a lot more attention on intelligence led policing, on live

stop criminals of which we have a few on One of those areas was

burglaries. Last year the number of break-ins was reduced by 22%

overall. There were 14% fewer break-ins of homes and 26% fewer

burglaries of other buildings such as businesses premises. Police also

made motor crime a priority and in 2012 more people were caught

speeding, not wearing seat belts and using mobile phones. But fewer

people were caught drink driving - that figure was down 15%. Mike

Bowron wants to drive home the message of careful driving. I wish

people would pay more attention to driving a tonne and a half of metal

at 30, 40 miles per hour. When you pick your phone up, is it really

necessary to make that call? The Police Chief said despite a �1

million cut to his budget, he is managing to cut crime and Jersey

remains a safe place to live. Guernsey's government began

debating a major cost-cutting plan today designed to save the island

tens of millions of pounds. It was the first opportunity the new house

had to discuss the Financial Transformation Programme, or FTP,

aimed at reducing spending by �31 million a year by 2014. Our

reporter Penny Elderfield joins me now from our Guernsey newsroom.

Penny, this is something the last States already signed up to -

shouldn't this government just be getting on with it?

Well, this plan for saving millions was something the last government

created and it's a plan this States is at least trying to put it into

action. But with a new government and new politicians, it was felt a

debate was needed. To give a bit of background, when the States changed

the tax system, it meant in order to balance the books savings had to

be found. And the target of �31 million a year by 2014 was set.

Today's debate was about this government reaffirming their

support to the process and the challenges ahead. Are they on track

to make the savings needed? They've managed to cut spending so

far by around �10 million a year but the target was 18. So they've

got some catching up to do. And one issue which was discussed today was

the need for more accountability and more transparency moving

forward, especially as the savings targets will be bigger, and the

decisions more difficult. States will have to make a series

of difficult tough decisions and give it is not clear who has

accountability for developing those policies, advocating and publicly

presenting them to the States, that would result in a chaotic

arrangements which will make delivering the savings improbable.

It was decided in future there should be a more detailed breakdown

of the savings and cuts being made. What happens if the States don't

give their backing to the plan this week? There isn't really a fallback

option. There's a deficit in the States accounts and that money

needs to come from somewhere. has been no plan be worked out. If

we do not reduced expenditure, we have a Embedded deficit in our

policies and the only alternative cure is to increase taxation. That

is not an attractive option for anyone. And obviously proposals to

increase taxes never go down that well with the public. And that's

something that will no doubt come up as debate continues tomorrow.

Thank you for joining us. It's a project that's had millions

of pounds of taxpayers' money pumped into it. But the plan to

roll out superfast broadband now faces yet more criticism. The

telecoms firm JT has already come under fire in Jersey's States for

the programme being behind schedule. And now there are fresh concerns

about its reliability. Nafisa Sayani has been investigating.

Gigabit Jersey, the world-leading project to offer superfast internet

speeds all over the island. Well, that's the plan. But after �20

million of government investment, is it delivering? When fibre is

rolled out in your area, JT will come into your house, they'll

remove your copper telephone line and replace it with a fibre cable

which comes into your house here, they'll then plug your telephone

line into it and this is where you'll get your broadband. And the

company says it'll bring big benefits. On the Gigabit Jersey

website, it explains: Whereas copper can have limitations, fibre

is designed specifically to send and receive vast amount of

information, i.e., the speed you buy is the speed you will obtain.

We're running a speed test at this house which should get two

megabytes. But as you can see, the speed that they're actually getting

is much less than what they're paying for. The BBC has spoken to

four different call operators at JT, all of them told us it was

impossible to get the advertised speed, and at best, we'd get 90% of

that. Another JT customer told me he's signed up for a 100 megabyte

connection but is only getting 49. That's like buying a pint of milk

that's only half full. The competition regulator says if

customers regularly notice a difference bigger than 10%, they

need to take it up with the telecoms company. On fibre, it

ought to be possible for the provider to be much more confident

about precisely what speed customers get, so if there is a big

divergence between what they're receiving and what they've been

promised, it's important for customers to raise that with the

operator and if they're not satisfied, to raise it with us. But

JT argues even with the increased reliability of the fibre network,

there are still uncontrollable factors that limit the speed.

guarantee a service into the premise, and then depending on how

the service is carried and the end termination of equipment, could

mean across the air to a device which is working at a lower speed,

it could mean the sharing of devices which are vying for speed

at the same time. These all affect people's perception of service.

That's work we have to carry out as we go through this process: to make

sure we are very clear on our website of what a particular

service can bring. The super fast broadband project should be

complete by 2016 - and promises to make Jersey a world-leader. But for

some customers, just getting what they've been promised and paid for

We would like to throw this open to shoot. Tweet us your thoughts. If

you have been affected. Let's turn our attention to the weather

our attention to the weather forecast. Quite a blustery day

today. A little bit quieter overnight and also a bit drier.

Towards dawn, you might see a few showers. Fairly light and fleeting

and becoming mainly dry later. Also tomorrow, will see a change as

thicker cloud approaches from the South West. We are between weather

systems so it is generally drive. Later, we see this line of cloud

and this line of shower was coming in. It will be around first thing

tomorrow morning. A new area of low pressure down here brings us wet-

weather as we move into fried egg. Tonight, some clear skies,

temperatures dipping into minimum - - single figures. A south-westerly

wind the stock tomorrow, we wake up to a few brief morning showers.

Then, some sunny spells. By the evening, we will start to see some

patchy light rain coming up from the south. 11 degrees so still

relatively mild. There is our coastal waters forecast. Times of

And for our surface, the wave is pretty big tomorrow. Surfers. As

removing to Friday, will see some more persistent rain. Showery rain

into the afternoon, perhaps a little bit brighter with a

scattering of showers. The big change will be dropped in the

temperatures. Saturday, cold northerly winds. Goodbye for now.