A NEW fire main installed to improve safety at North Side has not been approved by the Home Department because it is faulty. The £600,000 addition to the Bulwer Avenue main was not pressure tested before being encased in concrete and now leaks.

Although the high-pressure water supply is operational for emergency use, it causes maintenance problems while on stand-by.

‘We have not signed it off because there are some minor unresolved issues reference the leakage in the spur,’ said Home Department deputy minister Francis Quin yesterday.

The problem is a result of serious flaws in an earlier project to install a new sewage-pumping station in St Sampson’s and to route the fire main across the harbour bed.

The contractor was inadequate and was poorly managed by the States’ own engineers and the project was massively overspent.

Public Services minister Bill Bell said yesterday that the matter would go before the House later in the year to decide how it would be paid for.

‘When the report does go before the States, how that additional expenditure will be found will be a matter for recommendation by Treasury and Resources,’ he said.

‘We believe the States has learned from this experience, as indeed we should.’

He was unaware, however, that the Home Department had not accepted the fire main, for which it contributed £600,000.

‘There’s been no overspend as far as we are concerned,’ said Deputy Quin.

Chief fire officer Ron Taylor said the system was fully functional and met the design specifications for firefighting purposes.

Deputy Bell confirmed that UK contractor T. J. Brent, which carried out the work, had been paid following its acceptance of a negotiated settlement.

In April 2000 the States accepted Brent’s tender and work began soon afterwards.

Then-deputy Roy Bisson was the only dissenter, saying that the project was too expensive.

Work had been expected to cost £2.17m. including road resurfacing and consultants’ fees, but shortcomings in the process took the total bill to £3.04m.

The former Public Thoroughfares Committee was responsible for the handling of the contract under advice from Guernsey Technical Services.

As costs escalated, the former Advisory and Finance estates subcommittee commissioned an independent audit by marine consulting engineers Beckett Rankine Partnership, which was delivered in January.

The report was critical of the part played by Technical Services but said the most serious issue was the choice as contractor of T. J. Brent, which did not have the necessary experience to carry out the work.

In August 1999, Technical Services had written to PTC saying that some aspects of the proposed design were unusual and recommending that a suitably experienced consultant should carry out a review.

Beckett Rankine identified that the suggestion had been deflected as a result of personality clashes within PTC.

As a result of the problems, the construction period went from 38 to 72 weeks.