Emergency: just how bad are Jescc's finances?

WARNING lights have long been flashing around the joint emergency control centre.

But with revelations that since its inception in March 2015 it will have gone just shy of £500,000 over its operating budget, and a budget that let's not forget has gone up considerably on initial expectations anyway, the time is ripe for a deep dive into the project.

One of the biggest issues is that there is nothing in the public domain which says what it was meant to achieve and how its success would be measured.

We have bits and pieces of information from interviews with those behind it, sure, but nothing firm and measurable, and goalposts which have moved so much it's difficult to know what game we are playing.

We were told in 2014 that there would be key performance indicators, but never what they were and never since how Jescc has performed against them.

This is a project that, because it was at an operational level, has never made it to the States for a detailed examination.

And that has created a vacuum of information in the public domain so that when things start going wrong, we struggle to judge just how wrong they have gone.

Remember this is a project which had something like £300,000 in set-up costs, has an IT contract worth £1.5m. and an expected annual bill of, well, that is interesting in itself.

The 2015 authorised budget was £564,000, they spent £743,000, and, according to the 2017 Budget report that went to the States in November, the original 2016 budget was £680,000 and then for 2017 £684,000 was earmarked.

Now, initially with no explanation, we are told that the budget for 2016 is actually £951,000 and they have spent £1.1m.

In August 2014, the then Home Department deputy chief officer said that 'money is not the driver, the drive is enhancing the emergency service response'.

Staffing issues have driven the three overspends.

It was initially meant to have 20FTEs, that is now 26.

But that only tells part of the story, because retention problems have dogged Jescc.

New terms and conditions have been drawn up in response, but not arguably soon enough, and, again, given what has happened, what reassurance do we have without a fully published, independent review that the response is the right one at the right time?

We are beyond 'trust us' territory.

Home Affairs is now going with its begging bowl to Policy & Resources for a budget increase for Jescc – again, we were not told how much for.

If P&R knew what was happening earlier than we did, and you can only assume it did, perhaps it explains the rather frosty reaction it has had to any possibility of having to find extra money to fund a review of law enforcement this year. That uncosted review came out during Home Affairs president Mary Lowe's update to the States at the end of April.

She also used that speech to flag that an update was coming on Jescc ahead of the States accounts being published – while the finances were being finalised, the committee was getting regular updates so knew at the time what was coming.

Only Deputy Barry Paint picked up on this in the questions that followed, asking whether the cost to the States of running the coastguard had increased or decreased since it had been separated from the port radio operation.

Deputy Lowe said: 'We are having a full review of that, which, again, I explained in here, and the costs, because we have heard different costs, and it is important we actually have an absolute account of everything that has been happening in Jescc. The committee are very mindful of that and very anxious about that to make sure we keep asking questions about it, and keep that service going, because it is an important service. We will be reporting back on the outcome of that review.'

We have yet to hear what the answer is.

This is obviously not the only project at committee level that has overspent.

We all know the public outcry at what happened at Salerie Corner, for instance, and that was for a one-off £65,000.

This is of a whole different magnitude.

In a wider sense, it leaves the public questioning what else is going on with projects at these levels in the States – how do we ensure fair scrutiny and reassurance that money is not being wasted on items that do not come to the States or to the public in any detail?

Rightly long gone are the days that a senior figure can simply say there is nothing to see here and an obliging public go away.

One of the answers lies in published and updated key performance indicators.

For example, with Jescc, that could be regularly updated and comparable emergency response times.

Perhaps the service is now so efficient and robust that the overspends are a price worth paying.

We just do not know.

And KPIs can be as much about celebrating success and improvement as identifying weaknesses.

They may not be perfect, but they are better than Trump-esque platitudes – 'we are changing this because it will be great'.

What we know from experience is that change projects are, to be polite, challenging for the States.

But change and reform is exactly what is needed – as has been well flagged by this administration and is already under way through things like shifting which buildings services operate from.

Now we need to be given the confidence that it is being fully delivered.