Building firms look to plan ahead too

While 27 strategic aims detail initiatives for the finance sector, retail, tourism and e-gaming with specific ideas for such projects as a digital greenhouse, angel investment fund and multiple new commerce laws, any benefits for the building industry are by-products not core products.

For example, while the department plans to improve the supply of land for commercial premises, it is not solely to benefit building firms.

Instead the department's economic development framework explains that while sectors of the economy such as agriculture, horticulture, sea fisheries and construction will get support from the States, they have not been singled out for specific assistance.

In recent times that would have mattered less. As a series of large States-sponsored building projects worked their way through the pipeline there was plenty of work for the larger firms.

At times it seemed there were too many health blocks, schools, homes for the aged and new clos to be handled with comfort.

However, the continued economic downturn and a determination by the States to get a grip on capital spending have caused the multi-million pound projects largely to dry up. With reduced cashflow, inevitably firms have to be quick to reduce their cost base – and that usually means cutting staff.

While the States cannot exist to prop up any industry, it does illustrate the danger of shutting up shop and slashing capital expenditure. There are many private sector businesses which depend on States cash to pump prime their industry.

In that context, potential lengthy delays to the redevelopment of the two schools at La Mare de Carteret at a cost of about £60m. look all the more important. A project of that scale has the capability to give a significant lift not just to the contracted building firm but to its supply industries.

All of which put considerable pressure on the States to apply some certainty to the scale and timing of their plans to redevelop the schools so that island firms can form their own business plans