Time to talk about our population

For those of us brought up aware of ‘Pop & Mig’, the much-maligned Population & Migration Committee of the States which seemed to be obsessed with work permits (never accepted by the States) and keeping as many people out of Guernsey as possible, there has been a significant shift in policy over the years.

We’ve gone from 'keep them out' to 'let them in', almost without anybody noticing. Significant changes to housing licence policy straddled the period where we made that policy change, suddenly appearing to realise that economic growth was where we needed to be.

Yet despite this, we haven’t seen Jersey-style population growth of 30-40% over the past generation. We’ve rather limped along at 10% over that period, constrained, it seems by relatively low inflation, sluggish economic growth and no great appetite to make the sweeping statement builds that Jersey embraces to look busy, to accommodate our new arrivals.

Yet suddenly, at a time when we both most and least need it, we’ve got the kind of population inflation that we haven’t seen since before the global financial crisis. In the past five years thousands of people have come into to live and work Guernsey – and while most of them appear to have more or less gone straight out again, we're now growing our population at 1% a year.

A trickle that becomes a flood? The thin end of the wedge? It’s true that we need new arrivals to support our economy as our population ages significantly, though we have little realistic prospect of housing them all.

It’s an issue that won’t be easy to fix. But one that will certainly put population back to the front of mind for politicians and our community in the next couple of years.