Plans For Guernsey Technology Park Put On Hold

Robert Lee, Tax-news.com, London

04 April 2001

Last autumn, we reported that Guernsey was set to receive a boost to its e-commerce ambitions with a proposal by Specsavers Optical Group to create a Guernsey Technology Park (GTP). At the time, it was thought that the first unit in the GTP could be built and ready for occupation by the end of 2001, subject to the Island Development Committee granting permission for the proposed development, but this week Guernsey's online news service This Is Guernsey reported that Specsavers has put the plan on hold.

Specsavers submitted plans to the Island Development Committee in mid-September to build the two-storey, 120,000 sq ft park adjacent to the airport. Specsavers said that the development at La Villiaze, St Andrews, would address the current shortfall in e-commerce facilities and 'set a benchmark in business accommodation that is unprecedented in Guernsey, through the provision of high quality, self contained units incorporating clean, modern design and construction techniques.' The company touted the GTP as the 'catalyst required to initiate Guernsey's launch onto the global e-commerce stage' and by last October more than a dozen companies both local and international had registered an interest in taking space at the site.

However, according to This Is Guernsey, Specsavers has said that it cannot take its plans for the GTP further forward following proposals announced by the Board of Industry in January to re-zone land in the same area with a view to establishing its own development. Specsavers is unclear as to what the Board of Industry intends for its high-tech initiative, and the group's chairman, Doug Perkins, was quoted as saying: 'It would be unwise for us to expand our concept until the Board of Industry has clearly defined what market its development is aimed at. Once this has been clarified we will be able to assess whether there is an opportunity for us to work together.'

Whilst Specsavers and the Board of Industry could feasibly work together, the optical group must surely be disappointed that its plans have had to be put on the back burner for now. Although the GTP had not been the subject of a major promotion campaign, a number of Internet-based and light industrial companies had already expressed an interest, including some from the US.

Mr Perkins said last year: 'We have been very impressed with the initial response to our plans for the GTP, which has yet to be marketed at either national or international levels. It is particularly significant that some have expressed a strong interest in installing and running a secure, underground data centre, utilising 40,000 sq ft below the proposed development....We already know that Guernsey’s finance-dependent economy urgently needs to diversify in the face of growing international security of offshore centres. What we are now seeing is further evidence that e-commerce and light industry offer a genuine alternative for the island’s future prosperity.'

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