Nurses’ homes on green fields face final defeat in the States

In 2022, the States rejected an attempt to protect the land from development, agreeing instead a compromise that any such project should be offset by spending up to £300,000 to buy land of an equivalent size elsewhere to be converted into grassland for dairy farming.

However, when the current Policy & Resources Committee was elected in December the following year it quickly withdrew a planning application for development at the PEH.

Although no additional accommodation for key workers has been opened since then, P&R has now claimed that the 2022 States’ resolutions on the field have been ‘superseded by events’, and is asking for them to be rescinded at this week’s meeting of the Assembly.

Health & Social Care president Deputy Al Brouard has consistently bemoaned lack of States support for his committee’s wish to build two blocks of accommodation and car parking in the field of seven vergees next to the former Duchess of Kent residential home in the grounds of the hospital.

It is one of 37 outstanding States resolutions which deputies will be asked to rescind this week, although it is possible that the item will end up being deferred until February due to the volume of business in front of the Assembly.

The oldest, which goes back more than 10 years, directed Home Affairs to amend the island’s gambling law to allow more public lotteries outside of the CI lottery.

Home Affairs said it had been unable to prioritise the work and now has P&R’s support for it to be scrapped completely, following a 2019 report which raised concerns about the health impact of gambling in Guernsey.

‘The health impact assessment showed that it is scratchcard use that is most strongly associated with negative health indicators,’ said P&R.

‘It was also noted that people aged under 18 were managing to purchase Guernsey lottery tickets which does indicate that some action is needed in this area.’

The States’ Trading Supervisory Board, which operates the scratchcard game, has pledged to introduce greater controls and develop a campaign to promote safer gambling.

‘It would neither be appropriate nor good governance to rely on a policy developed over 10 years ago to introduce new legislation when a more recent evidence base is available that should be considered, and therefore the resolution should be rescinded,’ said P&R.

The senior committee revealed that there were 191 States resolutions outstanding and yet to be fully actioned as of August last year, split almost evenly between those made during the current political term and those dating back to previous terms.

‘Since 2016, the Assembly has agreed more than 3,500 resolutions, excluding those that were purely an order of business or procedural,’ it said.

P&R is looking at how it can improve monitoring and reporting on progress against extant resolutions.

Since 2016 the committee has been required to produce an annual report to the States.