Douglas Central Catherine Anne Corlett/Chris Thomas

"I am not happy with the “shared space” scheme that, at some considerable cost, was put forward by the Department of Infrastructure as being the only way ahead for the promenade. If we wish to keep the Victorian flavour of the promenade the scheme as envisaged by the Department would be totally out of character.

I believe that the plans for the Promenade could and should have been drawn up in-house without recourse to costly consultants.

We need to deal with the sub-structure and re-surface the road. If we are to keep the horse trams then I believe a single track,with passing places, from the Sea Terminal to the Strathallan is all that’s required."

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The Minister for Policy and Reform (Mr Thomas): Thank you very much, Mr President.

I want to, first of all, associate myself with the excellent remarks made by Minister Cregeen and Mr Turner in respect of the validity of previous Tynwald resolutions and the ability of this Government and this Court to actually start afresh and take a new approach, where necessary.

Every one of the Tynwald policy resolutions from the last administration is being taken into account as we put our programme out for Government, but they are what they are: they are Tynwald resolutions and, we hope, in January, we will be adopting a new Programme for Government.

The second point I wanted to make is, again, to associate myself with Minister Cregeen and 3350 Mrs Beecroft and the Minister, which is that I am fully behind the motion, as brought. I want to congratulate the Minister, for similar reasons that many other people have made, which is that he is grasping the nettle, he is trying to go about this the right way, which is to get us to agree principles before coming forward with the funding motion to actually start on this work, which we all recognise needs to be done.
3355 What a shame we did not have Minister Harmer here in July 2013, because there was actually an option on the table, before we began Phase A of the Promenade scheme, to step back for a few months, to look at all of the principles and what we were trying to do and actually to adjourn the first Phase A ‘sine die’ – however you want to say it – until we actually had all of the options considered and all of the priorities and all of the principles. We could have been three years ahead of ourselves, if we had actually taken that option that day back in July 2013.

Finally, three issues: the first one is that I am delighted that the culture quarter has been mentioned by three people to date. I really do hope that the people responsible for pavements in the Infrastructure Department and Transport will actually work with people like Culture Vannin and the Arts Council and all of the other people involved, to actually make that really 3365 happen. It is not just about improved pavements; it is actually about many more things. This Government is working together and this is something that we can realise around the Sefton, around the Villa Gaiety complex, to actually put together something that brings the Promenade into Douglas town centre with the cultural facilities that we already have.
The second point is that I am delighted that Mr Shimmins, particularly, mentioned the concept of active travel, because I would really like to hope that Infrastructure Department will be working in its Public Transport Division and its Highways Division to actually realise some great opportunities to help people come by foot, by bicycle or even by horse – if you are Mr Boot – into the centre of Douglas (Laughter) to actually take part in the activity and cultural centre and the like.

Finally, this is an appeal to the people out there who care about the heritage, quite rightly, and who want to preserve and to conserve it, but it takes more than just objecting to political activity to preserve something; it actually takes more than that. It should be about coming up with positive proposals for how the governance should be improved. It comes up with working with the Department in Government to actual finance the improvements.

So, everybody who is listening, who cares, like I do – and I know like the Minister does – about conserving our heritage in every one of its dimensions, we actually now need to have action and we need to have funded actions and we need to have proper governance arrangements.

A couple of years ago, Minister Beecroft, I think, took part in working groups about how the 3385 governance of all the heritage transport could be organised and that work has been ongoing, I believe, but I have not seen the results as yet. That was something else that was part of the July 2016 resolution, so I really do hope that people outside seize the nettle and come back to us with positive proposals.
Thank you very much, Mr President, Hon. Members.

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