But whether there is confidence that candidates might take this on board alongside their own political agendas once some of them become deputies is another matter.
While it has become usual at a themed hustings for candidates to say just enough about a certain topic in an attempt to gain a vote, the self-styled G8 – a mix of business leaders and not-for-profit community groups – saw a benefit in a ‘reverse hustings’ where its panel sought to start an honest conversation in front of candidates about the ‘gaps’ that they believe urgently needing filling, and where exactly they can help with that.
They took a high attendance from candidates making up some of the audience as a hopeful sign that at least some of it will be taken forward.
Chamber of Commerce vice-president Brooke Kenyon, on the panel, said that people were willing to give the time to help action become more rapid in government.
‘We have lots of candidates in the audience today, we’re asking for you to recognise that in these roles, please keep the dialogue open and use us.
‘There’s huge subject matter expertise in the G8 and we are ready and willing to get stuck in,’ she said.
‘A lot of industries are moving so quickly that by the time a [government] decision is made, something else has come along and we need to be on the front foot.’
Retaining young people and getting more focus on apprenticeships was a hot topic among the panellists and the audience.
John Bampkin, chairman of the Guernsey Construction Forum, said that not enough apprentices were going through the system, contributing to the lack of tradespeople in the island.
‘We’ve got an ageing housing stock, one of the oldest in Europe, and ageing infrastructure, both of which need a huge amount of maintenance, and the number of relationships and people in the industry has been in massive decline for the last 10 years,’ he said.
‘For me we need a huge investment in those apprenticeship schemes to bring skill into our industry. For any new deputy I would love to see some real focus and emphasis on those last two years in school, to have focused programmes and see what certain people are best suited to.’
A comment from an audience member and a question from another referenced the difficulty of getting an apprenticeship, and how to encourage more females into the scheme.
Louise Misselke, principal of The Guernsey Institute, said from the audience that it now had more apprentices than ever before.
‘It’s a huge priority for growth in The Guernsey Institute. We have female apprentices working in professions that have traditionally been male. It’s a community-based challenge, and not something that education have to necessarily fix, it’s all of our issues,’ she said.
Getting people back into work and economically active while they have to address childcare, came up as a major issue.
Jo Peacegood, the new chairwoman of the Guernsey International Business Association, said although unemployment levels in the island remained really low, there were many other people who did not appear on the statistics who were not contributing to the island’s tax-take.
‘We have a significant number of people in Guernsey who aren’t economically active, yet we have a significant number of roles across all of our sectors that we can’t fill, so we need to look deeper into this,’ she said.
‘Industry are willing to work with government wherever we can help. We all want to see Guernsey prosper, but we really need to focus on why do we have a higher number of people on this island compared to any of our closest neighbours who aren’t economically active.’
Conversation stretched to the flexibility that employees need to provide, and the prospect of using space in town for flexible childcare that would not cost the bigger part of a person’s salary.
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