Retail report: Sandpiper link?
Monday 11th August 2008, 3:00PM BST.
THE company behind a £50,000 review recommending that no new supermarkets should be built in Jersey is working for the biggest supermarket chain in the Channel Islands.
Property consultants DTZ recently published a report on Jersey’s future retail needs, one of the key findings of which was that no new supermarkets were needed.
Since then, it has emerged that DTZ are working on another project for Sandpiper — the company who bought out Channel Island Traders and who are one of two supermarket operators in Jersey — to sell two multi-million pound hotels in Guernsey. The hotels — St Pierre Park and La Trelade — are worth around £20 million.
DTZ’s head of retail planning, Jonathan Baldock, who wrote the retail report, did not know anything about the hotel sale when asked by the JEP. But in any case, he said, because the projects were in two different sectors — hotels and retail — there was no danger of a conflict of interest.
Environment director Chris Newton (pictured), who commissioned the report, said that he did not know that DTZ were working for Sandpiper, but he added that he was happy with the work and did not see any conflict. Sandpiper have declined to comment.
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even though this might have been an oversight i disagree with Jonathan Baldock that this is not a conflict of interest. This is a conflict because even though it was a separate department it was the same company who is working for Sandpiper. It should be re-issued for a new report and from a company independent from the island.
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Why does this not suprise me. In this Island it is not what you know it is who you know. It is all corrupt and backhanders everywhere. WE DO NEED ANOTHER SUPERMARKET that does not charge extortionate prices unlike CI Traders or Sandpiper as they now go by. The money grabbing capitalists are destroying this island and driving away the families who can no longer afford to live OR EAT here!
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Well- You couldn’t make it up could you? unbelievable!
Wouldn’t you have thought that this would have been picked up before tax payers’ money was wasted on yet another consultants’ review!
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Nothing new here then!
Just how much money do we spend on reviews/consultation fees?
I bet all of the above paragraph will never be published!
Do we not have a ‘brain’ for ourselves? Seeing that we are ‘short’ of cash!
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Any chance of them repaying the £50,000 or even explaining how they spent the money to come up with a totally biased report in favour of the status quo, I think not. Chris Newton says he didn’t know that DTZ were working for Sandpiper is this not very basic common sense to find out these things before spending taxpayers money. ps Sandpiper have declined to comment, I’m not surprised…
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Welcome to Jersey!! What a con obviously there are on the payroll too hence the reason they got the contract!! We do need more than we have at the moment – we need an independant budget supermarket Lidl / Tesco / Asda or the like that can give the theiving local chains a fair run for their money. Having just returned to the Island from the UK my shopping bill has increased by over 50%.
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We certainly do need a third supermarket operator. Just look at the benefit that additional operators have brought to the mobile phone market, competition at last.
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There has been a clear cock-up here. The States should ask if DTZ had any conflict of interest and DTZ should have run a conflict check internally. The fee should be returned.
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‘DTZ’s head of retail planning, Jonathan Baldock, who wrote the retail report, did not know anything about the hotel sale when asked by the JEP’
Forgive me if I stroke my chin while reading that!
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sandpiper ..what can i say….they should let another supermarket come in….people need jobs
i’ve tried sandpiper as i was a supermarket employee but was refused due to my condition
people need cheap supermarkets for cheap food due to the 3 per cent sandpiper ie checkers are to expensive
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The real problem here is our government and not Sandpiper! If only our Minister could refrain from playing overlord to the retail market place we would have a free market and a whooping saving to the consultancy budget.
Minister in; no competition and taxes up.
Minister out; competition and taxes down.
A no-brainer for the next election.
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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Politicians are like bananas; they come in green, turn yellow and are never straight. There is an old addage, “Proper planning prevents pathetic perfomance.” Or proper planning prevents p*** poor performance.” Or even,”Failing to plan is planning to fail.” Clearly the States didn’t do thier homework before commissioning this report – then why don’t the States hold a survey of the rsidents and save money spent on a report by so called experts.
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What’s the problem with competition?We have just returned from visiting relatives in Lincoln where we regularly shopped at Tesco but we also enjoyed all the local smaller shops who were still doing good trade,even the two local butchers who are on the same street (and in close proximity to Tesco)were doing well.
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I don’t know Kirsty but am pleased to see that she enjoyed her shopping in Lincoln because we moved to Lincoln from Jersey two years ago and are still overwhelmed with the choice and prices which we now enjoy.As she correctly states small shops are also doing good business and we regularly use a variety of the big stores whilst also supporting village butchers and farm shops.I believe Lincoln and Jersey have roughly the same population so the old chestnut about not enough people to support another supermarket in Jersey is rubbish-everyone copes well here!
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