What's the real buzz about P&R's vision of the future?

IN HIS speech to the annual Institute of Directors convention, Policy & Resources president Gavin St Pier had his Buzz Lightyear moment.

The Toy Story character has an un-shiftable belief that he is a hero spaceman and can fly despite all the evidence to the contrary. In the end Buzz, thanks to some outside assistance, does indeed fly – after a fashion.

Deputy St Pier attempted to broaden the focus as he set the scene for the 20-year vision for Guernsey released the next week.

'If we're going to lift our collective game and address the issues that matter most to people in our community – and if we are going to build the Guernsey that will offer our children and our grandchildren a better quality of life than we enjoy today – we must now look beyond economic growth and consider social development,' said Deputy St Pier.

'In other words, we must go to prosperity and beyond.'

Fine and welcome words, and well-suited to an upbeat Institute of Directors dinner, but the reality is nowhere near as clear cut.

Take the benefits uprating report as one example.

At the same time as P&R was working to get deputies to support its happiest place to live dream, to sell the message that it was as much about social development as it was economic, it had walked into Raymond Falla House and told Employment & Social Security that there was no money to help out the poorest in our society – those families and individuals that the previous States had agreed were on an 'intolerable' income.

The committee acquiesced, but fired warning shots that the States was now knowingly allowing this situation to continue.

Happiest place to live? Not if you are on the margins.

As much about social development as economic? When it comes down to it, when the States needs to balance the books, that extra £3m. a year benefits rise argument has come down firmly on the economic side.

To achieve the plan's headline aim of an inclusive and equal community, the States is meant to 'implement the improvements required to monitor, understand and reduce poverty and income inequality in Guernsey'.

So scratch beneath the surface and ask yourself whether it is meeting that test. It illustrates nicely the inherent tensions.

P&R will argue there are moves in the Budget that are all about addressing income inequality – raising the personal income tax allowance and slowly withdrawing the personal allowance for higher earners, for example.

Others will point out this does nothing to help the very poorest in society, who do not even benefit from the allowance – and many are then being stung by other tax rises, fuel and the like, and other increased charges for services such as waste.

No one has any idea what the net effect is of all these changes in tax, benefits and charges on individuals.

That kind of tension will arise whatever the plan, but sweeping goals are unmeasurable ones and also ones that can quickly lead to public disillusion because of it.

P&R has failed to meet the criteria in the plan in other ways already too.

The first bullet point of sustainable public finances is to adhere to the States' fiscal rules. The 2017 Budget fails to do that – just take a look at what is happening to the capital spend to balance the books.

Future Guernsey is a vision so broad that it can mean all things to all people.

Under the target of being a safe and secure place to live, we find the States are to 'ensure the built environment is of a high quality, reflecting our local distinctiveness and meeting the needs of businesses based in Guernsey'.

To traditionalists, that means a vision of granite cottages in sepia tones – but it can equally be used as an argument for challenging modern architecture.

Planners like to remind us every now and then that they cannot dictate what style people build to if it meets the planning requirements the States has set out, which kind of makes the goal an empty promise anyway. There are no granite cottage amendments to the Island Development Plan – well, not yet anyway.

Deputy St Pier said Future Guernsey was a destination.

He is absolutely right to say that the island needs a destination, a path to follow, an overarching vision that prevents yo-yo decision making, wasting money on areas that are not a priority simply because the committee involved got a proposal to the States first. It is a problem the previous States identified, and the one before that, and the one before that.

They all came up with plans, most of which grew into meaningless nonsense.

This stage should be the easy bit – broad sweeping statements that everyone can back – however, the ways of getting there differ.

And that is probably why the public and political response is mute to the grand vision.

Maybe when the committees are sent away to add their layers to Future Guernsey, things will get interesting.

Deputy St Pier has said the plan is unashamedly ambitious.

But write it in reverse – change your tagline to 'Guernsey: rubbish today, worse tomorrow', make your goals about an unhealthy community ravaged by social divisions and with a collapsing economy and you see it as no more than pure common sense that has taken six months to get off the ground and will take the same again to have any flesh on it. But we had to start somewhere – and this is at least somewhere.

Now let's watch the States members, just as Buzz did, strap some fireworks on their backs and see if they all end up travelling in the same direction, or flying around uncontrollably with sparks flying.