Andrew Jessop discusses the ongoing access row at £10m Roundhouse leisure centre

Transcript

00:00You were told by Manx Care and the Department of Health and Social Care that this access road will be blocked.

00:03It is not currently blocked. Do you know exactly what's going to happen?

00:06No, we don't. There is mention of signage and enforcement in the letter that we received from

00:14the Chief Executive of Arleman Government on Saturday evening but, you know, what form it will

00:20take in reality and how they are going to report it, you know, we have no idea at the moment.

00:26So when you arrived to work this morning were you unsure of what was going to be there, what wasn't

00:29going to be there? Well exactly, yeah, we didn't know whether there was going to be barriers or

00:32whether there was going to be a gang of people trying to stop people accessing but clearly at

00:38the moment, you know, there's free access behind us. There's a meeting tomorrow with Treasury,

00:42tell us a bit about that. Well it's a meeting between the officers and we thought it was about

00:48cash flow. Obviously we've got a problem at the moment that we haven't been allowed to draw down

00:54part of the loan money that was agreed and that's making it incredibly difficult for us to actually

01:02pay everybody that we need to pay at the moment. So hopefully that will get resolved,

01:07a bit of common sense will prevail and we can get last year's account signed off

01:14and then, as I say, Treasury will release in excess of a million pounds of funds to us.

01:20What could you say to the local businesses inside the roundhouse who perhaps don't know

01:23what's going on themselves? Yeah well we've tried to explain the situation to them, they understand

01:28that the commissioners have been doing everything that they can to actually meet all the conditions

01:37that were included on the planning but again a lot of this has been outside of our control so

01:42we've been relying on the actions of government departments to actually assist in this manner,

01:48whether it's approving a design for the pedestrian crossing or whether it's actually

01:55transferring the land. If the department wants a new roadway then obviously we don't own the land

02:02which the roadway needs to be built. So yeah, our hands are tied as usual. Yeah so obviously people

02:09are still accessing the site. We've told people if they are planning to visit the cars that they

02:16had followed the advice given by Manx Care back in January that people drive safely and be aware

02:22of the fact that there may be additional traffic on the road between Ballaroach Road and our entrance.

02:29And one thing I do just want to ask is there's a requisition meeting being called, can you

02:34understand the people of Braddon's frustration with the cost of this as well as the access

02:37ongoing issues? People are getting rather fed up. Well I think there's a lot of fed up people about

02:42a lot of things on the Ironman. Obviously it's a situation that we never planned to be in.

02:50We're doing our best to actually overcome those issues and hopefully all this will be

02:54performed around the EU. And just finally, obviously Manx Care have reiterated that they

03:01are going to put things in place so the access road can't be used. What would happen to

03:05businesses for you guys? Did you say that commissioners can still use it? Well at the

03:09moment they're saying that commissioners, staff and our contractors have access to the site.

03:15So strange enough if they can drive safely, I don't know why other people couldn't drive safely

03:20either. And if it does come to, there's borders or whatever's in place to stop people coming,

03:26how do people get to the roundhouse? Where would people park? How would they get here?

03:30Well at the moment there's no control over where anybody parks. But again we're trying to say to

03:36people, you know, whatever you do make sure that you park considerably and you don't block any

03:42emergency access point and route. But in an ideal world there'd be access to this site? Well at the moment there still is.