Chief Minister's Five Focuses For Jersey

Jersey's Chief Minister has told business leaders the government is reining in spending and prioritising five areas in 2024.

In an address to the Chamber of Commerce, Deputy Kristina Moore announced her government will cut spending on public sector projects by £30m.

She told them:

"It’s important for us to have the capacity to deliver on the projects we desperately need as an Island. By reprioritising in this sensible manner, we will shortly be returning £30m to the reserves.

It follows Ministers reprioritising and reevaluating what is most 'desperately needed'.

No more details have been given yet on what is being abandoned, but the Chief Minister later told Channel 103:

"We need to put more money into the Stabilisation Fund so that we're being sensible with public money and also provide assurance that the island is in a good place both now and in the future."

Deputy Moore said her Council of Ministers has  'five priorities for the year ahead'.

They are economic productivity, health, housing, children and families and investing in St Helier.

Businesses struggling to employ staff on licences are being given help in 2024 and 2025.

The Chief Minister says her government is scrapping annual charges for registered and licensed permissions for the next two years.

Every employer will also be granted one additional permission for a registered member of staff.

The Chief Minister says we should all be obsessing more about practical ways for our economy to grow and thrive.

"We all need to be focused on productivity, that means driving more value out of everybody's work.

We're going to remove the fees on applying for licences for new people for both this year and next, and then we will also grant one additional licence for every undertaking in the island."

The Waterfront and Central Market have been highlighted for development in St Helier - as well as 'putting the fun back into' Fort Regent.

This is despite back and forth from the planning committee and Jersey Development Company over its plans to build on the front near the harbour, along with years of ambitious redevelopment proposals for Fort Regent, which at one point included a casino.

When asked about this, the Chief Minister said Fort Regent is a 'fantastic' asset for the island.

"Many people really long for those days when it was a fun place to be, it provided shelter in the winter, safety and plenty of entertainment and things to do.

We need to get back to that place."

Concerning the Waterfront, Deputy Moore says it is a beautiful site and the aspiration has always been to deliver homes and facilities.

"We want to work really hard with our partners to ensure plans come forward for a project that can be delivered.

It's an exciting opportunity for the island and something we want to crack on and deliver."

The Chief Minister also reaffirmed that a new school will be built in St Helier, as well as replacement for Rouge Bouillon.

"It's been identified for some time as being in need of replacement to improve and modernise the standard of accommodation when they go to school."

Deputy Moore told the Chamber members her government still pledges to have hot meals in all primary schools by the end of the year, and also revealed that there are plans to create a pilot community school model in three primaries.

Pressed by Channel 103 for more details, Deputy Moore said they were not ready to be unveiled yet, but that the Children and Education team has been working on it for some time.

Of the health priority, Deputy Moore said government wants to focus on reducing wait times by 20% this year, following the success of the MRI staff cutting times down from 54 weeks to just six in three months.

More specialists were hired from the UK to help minimise the backlog of patients waiting for scans.

Alongside this, the Chief Minister reiterated the importance of making Jersey attractive to healthcare workers, something promised for some time.

"We've delivered more units of accommodation for our key workers and we've created an accommodation service to support them in finding homes so nurses don't have to spend part of their shift calling hotels to find a place for their colleagues to stay for the night.

There is a global shortage of healthcare workers and professionals, so we're not alone in this challenge.

What we need to do is have a competitive and attractive package for those people to either stay here when they're already working here or to come here and join our health service."

And finally, the last area of focus is housing.

The Chief Minister stated she also wants 1,500 homes built in Jersey, in line with the current Government Plan, an upgraded drainage network and to quadruple the connection rate for homes that do not have access to mains water.

The government says it has already made progress by discounting stamp duty, up to £700,000, to ease the 'scale of the problem' faced by first-time buyers.

Deputy Kristina Moore says we all know there are issues in our housing market.

"Many nations are finding that they have simply not built enough homes… and the combination of short supply and low-interest rates has caused prices to rocket way ahead of growth in wages."