Ports of Jersey’s historic harbours team is working with prison educators to refurbish all 160 benches placed around the harbour estate. Many of the benches feature plaques and memorials which require cleaning and maintenance. They have now all been surveyed and the team has teamed up with the prison to keep them looking smart and allow people to enjoy them.
Historic Harbours Manager, Mark Byrne, said: “We routinely maintain the benches on our historic harbour estate, but it takes a week to ten days to refurbish each bench which is slower than we would like, so we approached the prison service to see if this project would interest them as part of their rehabilitation work with prisoners. They were really interested, and we took it from there.”
Mark manages the logistics and buys supplies for the prisoners to use, and transports the benches to and from the prison. The prison team then fixes the legs, cleans the stainless steel, paints any cast iron sections in Oxford Blue to reflect their marine setting, and polishes the memorial plaques. Each bench is then numbered to aid their future maintenance.
The prisoners are paid for their work, and Ports of Jersey has donated two orbital sanders to allow more people to take part in the project.
The prison’s manager of vocational training, Peter Gould, oversees the team working on the memorial benches, and he said: “It has been an honour to be invited to help with such a wonderful project. The benches mean so much to the families and friends, and our committed and dedicated team is pleased to inspire fond memories. The project provides purposeful activity for prisoners, encouraging great teamwork, determination in their work and compassion for what these benches mean to others. We are hoping this project is successful so we can make it a permanent venture.”
Approximately 90% of all benches placed around Ports of Jersey’s historic estate bear one or more memorial plaques. The cost of the refurbishment is being covered by Ports without requests for contributions from family members.
Anne Pryke is pleased with the refurbishment of a bench placed at Rozel Harbour in memory of her husband, Roger. Anne said: “Thank you so much for sorting out the bench. It is amazing and such a great asset. So very pleased and to have the plaque replaced too. Such wonderful service by your team and the team at the prison.”
This initial phase of work will see 80-100 benches refurbished and will cost £7,500 for materials and prisoners’ time. The project will be assessed and, if deemed a success, could be extended into a rolling programme of work with the prison service.