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Every States committee except HSC kept within its budget last year - with the island's health and social care costs going £4million over what was assigned.
The fact that most States spending was within budget helped the island to balance its books, with a net surplus of £10m at the end of 2023.
But the accounts paint a continuing worrying picture for the future of our health and social care system warns Deputy Heidi Soulsby who has said there needs to be reform.
"...we're balancing the books...that's really good," she said. "But there is an underlying structural issue, with the demand for health and social care growing and the need to improve our assets and invest in our capital.
"Those two structural issues are still there. We know that. We are effectively washing our face as it were, but underlying there are real tensions."
One of the tensions the Vice President of Policy and Resources is referring to is the continued growing cost of providing health and social care services with the accounts stating that HSC's overspend was due to increased cost pressure in staffing, prescriptions and children’s services.
HSC overspent its budget by £4m (1.8%) while every other committee underspend or effectively came within budget.
Pictured: Read more about the 2023 States Accounts HERE.
The total of other committees was £0.6m favourable to the budget with the Committee for Education, Sport and Culture returning £0.6m to general revenue, and "favourable variances in both the Committee for Employment and Social Security (£0.7m) and the Overseas Aid & Development Commission (£0.5m). The remaining Committees had variances of less than £0.25m to budget" as reported in the accounts.
Overall, the various committees' net expenditure (operational income less expenditure) was £3.4m (0.6%) adverse to budget while centrally held amounts (savings targets, budget reserve, and service developments) saw £15.2m unspent.
The island's income was also boosted by increases in tax from employment income (£8.5m) and other taxation, mainly Banks (£11.3m).
With HSC continuing to overspend on its budget, Deputy Soulsby reiterated "that tension is still there".
"We've also got the strains through the growing demand in health and social care and needing to move to a more sustainable model," she warned.
"One area where we've seen the overspend (in HSC) is in overtime. It's really difficult to find the staff that we need to meet that demand, and that's shown in the employment figures within the accounts."
Express will be exploring those employment figures in a separate article.
Deputy Soulsby used to be President of HSC - she has long been an advocate of reform within the island's health and social care services.
"We've got to look at our model of health and social care and make sure that we've got a more sustainable model. At the same time, we need to improve the housing offer. We know this has been a long term issue. Some of us have been trying to push on that for a long time. At least now the States do own up to it being a crisis and we're doing something about it.
"Both a sustainable health position and housing are top priorities of the States and certainly from our point of view, we're trying to lead and support those responsible committees to really make the change that we need happen."
Deputy Soulsby said she is keen to see the States work together as a whole to solve the wider problems of recruitment and housing which is challenging HSC and many other parts of island life.
States accounts show £10m operating surplus
States accounts moving towards being IPSAS compliant
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