Cuts to States workload could go even deeper

A clear-out of dead wood should now be a regular fixture every four years as each new Assembly settles in. It is plainly ridiculous that a small island government with limited staff is carrying the burden of more than 500 political action points.

So this week’s announcement that a quarter of existing resolutions are to be revoked is good news. The States needs to be focused on urgent tasks and not historical baggage.

Some of the resolutions were more than two decades old. If successive Assemblies have been unable or unwilling to act and nobody has challenged that inertia then their value is questionable.

However, before islanders breathe a mask-protected sigh of relief for some common-sense housekeeping it is worth looking more closely at the 135 rescinded resolutions.

How much work are they really saving?

As many as half, for example, seem to be simply shifting the load. A resolution is cut but comes with an accompanying note that the work has moved on, not been cancelled.

The task set by the States years ago may have been superseded but the committee is still intent on implementing something similar.

Education, for example, wants to revoke 20 resolutions not because it no longer wants to transform its service but because it ‘wants to have the flexibility to develop its own strategic policy in this area’.

So it will not free up staff to do other work, merely redirect them to the same job from a new perspective. A similar tale applies to resolutions dealing with public sector reform and others.

Many of the other revoked resolutions were so outdated it is hard to imagine any civil servant was wasting a second on them.

The States could have been bolder and gone further. Twenty-three of the resolutions left untouched are more than a decade old.

Others look out of step with the tough times ahead: funding the Guernsey language, a report attempting to predict the next 10 years of Overseas Aid, an on-street parking scheme.

Rightly, all will have their champions, but if the States truly wants to cut its workload to the bone it needs a sharper knife.