States face £100m property repair bill

MINISTERS have starved States properties of vital maintenance cash and have allowed a backlog of around £100m worth of repairs to build up, according to the States spending watchdog.
The States spend less than half of the money needed to maintain their vast property portfolio even to a ‘medium level’, a Scrutiny panel heard this week.
And Comptroller and Auditor General Chris Swinson says that if the underfunding has gone on for around ten years, there are up to £100m worth of projects in the pipeline to be completed.
The current maintenance budget is £6.2m – well below the £15m that Property Holdings director David Flowers says is needed. And there could be a £90m to £100m backlog of work to carry out. (from thisisjersey)

Typical States neglect thier properties then suddenly they need to spend twice as much... GST will go up....

This only highlights the perennial problem the States have in their grand scheme approach to everything. The on-going running and maintenance costs are always underestimated. Every big project implies big on-going cost commitments, but of course thats a burden on future adminstrations, not the one currently building the 'iconic' structure.

They are not alone, how many people seriously look at the maintenace costs when buying a house? The best information I can find is that you should expect to spend 2% per year of the value of a house on maintenance. In the absence of any other infomation I would suggest we apply that rule of thumb as the minimum costs to other projects. £100 million incinerator, that will be £1.2 million a year in maintenance, minimum. Want a £300 million waterfront, that will be £3.6 million per annum, unles of course you include the overrun on the build costs. Those two alone are a pound a week per head of population in tax simply in maintenance.

Surely that these does not mean that the ministers have the right not to admit that they are to blame for such cost's