Former police officer aims to take town Deputy seat

Monday 18 April 2022

A former police officer, who says he has “grave concerns” about how the Government is being run and wants to see affordable housing developed at Snow Hill, is standing for election.

Chris Hopkins is hoping to become Deputy for St. Helier South, which has four seats and covers town, the Waterfront, Havre des Pas and Mont Millais.

He served in the Force for nearly 25 years, and during that time was a member of the States of Jersey Police Association and public sector workers' union Prospect, where he assisted members with internal employment issues.

For more than nine years, he has been a Traffic Officer, which includes conducting driving tests.

Mr Hopkins says he was encouraged to stand for election following a "great deal of experience of poor, ineffective and expensive Governmental practices caused by poor quality, poorly trained senior managers."

Why did I decide to run as a candidate for Deputy St Helier South in the 2022 jersey elections? Here's my first main reason:

I have grave concerns with the way the current GoJ members are behaving and the poor, protracted decisions they are making.

— Chris Hopkins (@CPHelection) March 2, 2022

Among his frustrations are the use of external consultants following the 'OneGov' restructuring, and the amount of money being spent on locum Health staff.

He would like to see an "independent ombudsman" for the civil service put in place to "prevent massive amounts of time and money being wasted on internal investigations", which may result in the loss of valuable staff or golden handshakes.

"Pushing the redevelopment of Government-owned land and buildings that lie empty" to address the cost of buying and renting homes is also high on Mr Hopkins' agenda.

If elected, he says he will "push for the redevelopment of Snow Hill car park", which he describes as "a reasonably cheap way to bring affordable housing into the centre of town".

"I would put a first floor parking for residents and then a number of floors above for the building of reasonable apartments leading to a bridge access to Fort Regent," he explained.

He also believes "that there is scope to building both sides of Pier Road car park using one of the upper levels as resident parking with access in both directions to apartments."

"This would require the moving of the Government of Jersey laboratory building which is in desperate need of new premises which could be moved to the hospital buildings at the old Les Quennevais School as an annexe. These are two easy-to-repurpose sites and there are many more."

On population, Mr Hopkins is also firm that the Government should be "spending far more on encouraging young people to stay on the island and reduce the skills drain we currently face" – something he says is linked to housing issues.

"We must get better at developing and trusting our own talent as opposed to hiring expensive individuals from the UK to very little effect," he commented.

Throughout his election campaign, and, should he be elected, Mr Hopkins says it is his "intention to wear my HAT", which stands for "honesty, accountability and transparency."

The election is taking place in June 2022.