Nurses’ pay missing from Revive and Thrive

However, one extremely important issue that is not mentioned in the Revive and Thrive document is that of nurses’ pay. In the early days of the pandemic, huge focus was given to medical requirements, including preparing the PEH and staff for the unknown. Rightly so, we all stood outside on a Thursday evening for several weeks applauding essential workers and to ensure that primarily frontline doctors and nurses were made fully aware of the high regard in which they are held by all islanders. So come on, States of Guernsey, you need to step up and award our nurses a realistic pay increase in the very near future. Apparently, agency nurses who do come here to work cannot wait to transfer to Jersey where salaries are considerably higher than they are here for doing the same job.

In a similar vein, the gold-plated secondary colleges idea must be scrapped. I appreciate that this is under review, but what on earth is the current Education president, who was pushing his idea in such a determined manner, doing on the panel? We are definitely not in ‘nice-to-have’ territory, and to think of spending in the order of £157m. on new schools must be put to bed permanently. For numerous reasons, including the new ‘action transport’ in which staff and pupils are expected to cycle, walk or, worst-case scenario, bus to school, they cannot be expected to travel from one end of the island to the other, but must attend one of three perfectly adequate existing campuses, i.e. The Grammar School (sorry, Les Varendes site), Les Beaucamps and St Sampson’s and get on with a rebuild of the fourth site at La Mare de Carteret (maybe £70m.?) as soon as possible.

Many other great opportunities and projects are listed in the Revive and Thrive document which need to be progressed immediately – we haven’t heard of the first one starting yet. One probable reason for that in my opinion, and I would guess that of many others, is that ‘The public service will be the engine that drives all of the action plans – from development through to delivery – and will play its part in recovery’. The record of any States department in getting past all the deliberations and getting things done is, to put it politely, not good.

The document also states, ‘No one group can achieve recovery alone. Collaboration is essential to connect government, and engage the public service, business, islanders and the third sector in the recovery effort’. ‘It will be reviewed by the Policy & Resources Committee as required to keep it current and relevant, taking account of feedback and direction from the States Assembly’. Obviously, further delays on the horizon?

I seem to remember that the current CEO, who has been in the post since the end of 2013, said that he was on a mission to carry out a major review of the structure of the public service, and I seem to recall had plans to reduce the workforce by c. 200 staff. Any progress with this reshaping has not been made public, except that several new top people on salaries of, no doubt, c. £80-£150k per year have been employed to assist with the project.

I hate to end on a negative, but can we really have confidence in the public services engine delivering the Revive and Thrive project in a timely manner? I doubt it and, based on past performance, I’m sure projects will still be under consideration in five years’ time.

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