THE Harbours department have denied that an ‘industrial problem’ was the reason they did not take part in the public sector benchmarking exercise.

Consultants KPMG said in their report that industrial problems led to Harbours not being involved in the performance management assessment exercise.

Harbours were the only States department not to be compared to benchmarks elsewhere.However, Harbours chief executive Brian Nibbs said the department simply did not have the resources to participate at the time.

‘It was not true to say that we had industrial problems.

A dialogue with KPMG was maintained throughout the benchmarking exercise.

A meeting arranged with KPMG for 3 November last year was cancelled by them.

The reason given was that the time frame was slipping and the overall delivery of the project would have been delayed,’ he said.Meanwhile, Tourism Board chairman Deputy Lyndon Farnham said he was not told the consultants had not been able to secure certain information from the Tourism department – including statistics on staff costs and budgets – they had evidently asked for.’Had I been told they wanted anything from the department, I would have intervened and told the officers to completely open our books.

I was disappointed to learn from the report that there was evidently information they may have requested but did not receive,’ he said.