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Working out ways to save the island money is taking longer than originally anticipated, with no recommendations for actually making those savings likely to be made before the end of this year.
The first 'Summary Report' compiled by 'The Reducing the Cost of Public Services Sub-Committee' was published yesterday.
It's been collated using responses given to three surveys, carried out during summer 2023.
The surveys gauged the ideas of members of the public, public sector employees, and politicians.
The three surveys combined received 1960 suggestions, submitted by 865 individual participants. When analysed those suggestions actually comprised 2385 ideas as some of the comments contained multiple ideas.
All of those ideas have been split into different categories and broken down further.
Pictured: The ideas for saving money/cutting public spending were collated through surveys and then categorised as above.
Some of the ideas suggested were considered to relate to work streams already in progress by different States departments so they were not analysed further. This included 505 comments relating to 'tax' and 143 around 'paid parking'.
Other suggestions around the airport, education, ageing well, and green energy were also disseminated to the relevant committees to include in their ongoing work in those areas.
New ideas were categorised as above and then explored further.
Of those, the most popular theme was around 'restructuring and rationalising' the States of Guernsey, and that included ideas such as reducing the number of staff and consultants on the public sector payroll.
Proposals for 'restructuring' or 'rationalising' the States of Guernsey also focused on things like ‘property and equipment’ - including the future of States owned sites (think the Castel or King Edward hospitals) while a smaller sub-section of ‘back office’ suggestions included things like further digitalisation of services.
Deputy Sasha Kazantseva-Miller is a member of the Sub-Committee working through all of the suggestions made.
She has admitted the work is taking longer than originally expected.
“The Sub-Committee had said previously it hoped to make recommendations to the Policy & Resources Committee early this year," she said. "But in light of the volume of responses and the need to coordinate with other existing reviews, we think that’s now unrealistic, and would not achieve the best and most coordinated outcome. It will therefore report back by the end of the year in line with the original direction of the States, which is a more reasonable and realistic timeframe.
"We very much appreciate the contributions of the many people who took part in the survey which has exceeded our expectations. We are also mindful there are many other people out there who did not send in suggestions but also have their own views on public spending. Whilst this preliminary analysis points to the potential for significant savings, as the next step we will be working closely with the Committees to develop them further to see which should be taken forward.
"And, ultimately, it will be up to the States of Deliberation, to decide whether they are willing to make some potentially difficult decisions in order to meet the target of £10-£16m in cost reductions that they resolved to find.”
Pictured: Deputy Sasha Kazantseva-Miller is a member of the sub-committee looking at ways to save the States money.
The Reducing the Cost of Public Services Sub- Committee was formed in 2023 as a Sub-Committee of the Policy & Resources Committee.
It was instructed to work with the States other Principal Committees and the Trading Supervisory Board to come up with a medium-term plan for delivering annual, recurring cost reductions of at least £10 - £16 million.
The Sub-Committee was established following a States resolution, which directed it to "identify and review essential community services and to consider whether structural change, cessation, outsourcing and/or commissioning of those services could deliver significant savings having regard to:
and to incorporate these into a medium-term plan for delivering overall cost reductions of at least £10m-£16m over five years to be considered by the States by the end of 2024.”
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