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The parishes and their douzaines remain essential to island life, and could do a lot more to support both their residents and our government, according to members of a working group.
Deputy Aidan Matthews has been working with a parochial working group comprised of douzeniers who want to build a better picture of which government and civil service responsibilities could be transferred to the parishes.
"[The working group] will be going through and thrashing out what could be more usefully done at the douzaines," said Deputy Matthews.
"For example, I've quite often thought that there could be a role for douzaines to get involved with smaller planning applications."
The advantages of this have been raised in the past, allowing the parish more control over developments in its jurisdiction, and more accountability for decision making.
Pictured: "Many of the douzaines would like more of a role in planning applications," said Deputy Matthews.
Each parish douzaine is run nearly entirely by volunteers, often long-standing residents who know their parish inside out.
"These people have lived there a long time, they have this community-based knowledge that is hard to get through a centralised function," said Deputy Matthews.
The Chair of the Douzaine Council, Mick Fooks, agreed wholeheartedly with this.
"There are 156 douzeneirs with a lot of experience of island life, it would be great to utilise that," he said.
Pictured: Mick Fooks, a long-serving Castel Douzenier and Dean of the Douzaine, wants more cohesion between the States and the parishes following the move to an island-wide system.
Mr Fooks continued: "Covid and Brexit has distracted from some of the work being done, but cohesion between government and the douzaine is something we're looking to promote."
Deputy Matthews said there is no particular timeframe for any particular action at the moment, but the working group will begin meeting more regularly.
"We want to move fairly quickly to understand what we can do. There are some dates coming up soon for the party to meet," he said.
The importance of the parish and its douzaine has not been lost following Guernsey's move to Island Wide Voting, despite some Constables citing a slight disconnect between parishioner and deputy.
"We often see that government tries to connect with citizens through a lot of modern ideas such as social media and updated websites," said Deputy Matthews.
"These definitely work, but we sometimes forget that some of the really old ways can work as well. Douzaines are a really ancient way of interacting with people."
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