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The Government has unveiled its spending plans for the next three years, including a £41m covid health recovery scheme, improvements to Elizabeth Castle and Fort Regent, a review of workers’ rights and help for first-time buyers.
But fuelling the ambitions outlined in the Government Plan 2022-2025 will be alcohol and cigarette duty rises, GST on all imported online goods worth over £60 from 2023, tens of millions of savings, and a major plan to borrow £1.8bn.
Provided it gets approval, the Government's largest project - both in terms of scale and cost - will, perhaps unsurprisingly, be the future hospital at Overdale.
In 2022, £85m is set to be spent on it, in comparison to a £125m spend on other infrastructure. From 2023 onwards, spend on the future hospital is set to outstrip all other infrastructure spending.
Pictured: Investment in Infrastructure and the future hospital over the coming years.
But the Government Plan is full of other projects and initiatives that the Government plans to spend on too - provided that States Members agree.
The plans, which could face several amendments, are currently scheduled to go to a vote on 14 December.
Here, Express gives an overview of the spending proposals, but you can click to find out more about the plans for taxes, savings and cuts, and ‘the big borrow’...
In addition to the £35m committed in last year’s Government Plan, £6.6m will be spent on CYPES over the next four years with an extra £1.1m for 2022 alone.
The money will fund a number of projects, including the redesign of the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service, which has seen its number of referrals increase by 26% over the last 4 years to 683 in 2020.
Pictured: Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAHMS) are among the projects to share a £6.6million funding influx.
Part of the funding will also go towards addressing “education demographic pressures”, particularly the increasing demand for special educational needs and disabilities - a measure recommended in the Independent School Funding Review published last year.
Other projects to be supported through the additional funds - many of which have already been announced - include:
To “improve wellbeing and mental and physical heath” in the wake of the pandemic, an additional £41.2m has been allocated to health-related measures over the next four years, as well as an extra £17m in 2022.
Part of the funds will go towards covid-19 related measures such as the Test and Trace Programme and Technology, the vaccine programme as well as the recovery of the health service following the pandemic. Money will also be dedicated to the storage provision and supply of PPE.
The funding is also intended to help address backlogs in children’s dental services as well as in cancer screenings.
Pictured: Part of the additional funding allocating to health services will go towards addressing backlogs in children’s dental services as well as in cancer screenings.
Dr Anuschka Muller, Director for Improvement and Innovation at Health and Community Services, explained that a number of screening areas, especially for bowel cancer, are currently experiencing long waiting times.
To address this, the service is looking at a mix of measures, such as additional staff and additional equipment to carry out the investigations and the screening itself.
Obstetric and Gynaecological Services will also receive investment, along with the ambulance service. The latter will not only see part its vehicle fleet being replaced but also a potential new ‘Specialist Paramedic Team’ created.
Between 2022 and 2025, an extra £9.2m will be spent on a variety of economic measures, along with an extra £2.5m next year.
£1.8m allocated will be allocated to the delivery of Jersey’s national anti-money laundering (AML) and Combating of Financing of Terrorism (CFT) responsibilities ahead of international assessment in 2023.
Pictured: 2022 will be the first year the Government delivers on the States Assembly decision to commit 1% of its budget on Arts, Culture & Heritage.
Funds will also be invested into Revenue Jersey to support continued policy development and compliance with prevailing global tax standards.
Finally, 2022 will be the first year the Government delivers on the States Assembly decision to commit 1% of its budget on Arts, Culture and Heritage.
In addition to this, further investment will be made into improvements at Elizabeth Castle and the 'Future Fort Regent project.
The latter will receive an additional £2million in 2022 and £3million the following year. The money will fund the creation of a dedicated access to the site, which could take the form of an elevator accompanied by a series of walkways from Snow Hill.
Pictured: The Fort gardens will be getting a revamp to create a "public park extension" to the town centre.
Meanwhile, improvements are being planned to the car park and vehicle access as well as to the lifts and escalators from Pier Road.
The money will also enable the relocation of the activities currently housed at the Fort into temporary sites so that the Fort interior can be stripped out.
The existing gardens will also be transformed to become a "public park extension" to the town centre, linking the North Snow Hill end of the Fort to La Collette Park.
Pictured: Workers employment rights will be reviewed thanks to additional funding.
£4.2m has been allocated over the four-year period along with an additional £1.2m in 2022 to a variety of measures aiming to “reduce income inequality and improve standard of living”.
This will include a ‘Income and Expenditure’ survey, a review of Workers’ Employment Rights and Housing and Food Licensing.
£2.3m will go to environment-related measures, with an extra £1.5m spent in 2022 alone.
This will include increased processing of waste water, as well as disposal of hazardous waste and recycling materials.
Parts of the funds will go towards the future Fisheries and Marine Resource Management.
There will also be further funding for the Climate Emergency Fund, which will use £23m of next investment to support the move to “lower carbon lifestyles”.
Pictured: Further improvements will be made to the Combined Control room for emergency services.
£12.9m will be spent on the modernisation of Government over the next four years, with an additional expenditure £3.4m in 2022 – a figure which excludes the borrowing costs for ‘Our Hospital’, which Express has explored in depth here.
The additional investment will go towards the Integrated Technology Solution programme, which came under fire earlier this year after it emerged its budget had more than doubled.
It will also fund the implementation of the Government HQ and Public Estate Strategy, which the Government says provides the framework which will be used when determining how to meet completing needs for publicly-owned land and buildings. It will be used to develop detailed property and asset management plans.
Further investment will also be made into the Combined Control room for Emergency Services, whilst funding will be allocated to the modernisation of the Customs and Immigration Service, which is expecting a surge in activity as a result of Brexit and the lowering of the GST ‘de-minimis level’.
Finally, funding will go towards the regulation of nuisance and public safety.
Pictured: The Queen will celebrate 70 years on the throne on Friday 3 June 2022.
A budget of £100,000 has been allocated for the celebrations of Her Majesty the Queen's Platinum Jubilee, which will be held on Friday 3 June 2022 in keeping with previous anniversaries of the Queen’s reign.
"The Queen will be the first ever British monarch to mark a Platinum Jubilee and therefore this will be a celebration that is unlikely to be matched for some generations," the Government Plan notes.
Meanwhile, an additional £450,000 will be given to the Bailiff's Chambers for Liberation Day celebrations over the next four years.
It is hoped that the celebrations planned for Liberation 75 in 2020 will be able to take place on 2022. All years’ events will include as a minimum, formal States Assembly sitting, public ceremony and afternoon party to enable the community to come together and celebrate one of the most important moments in the Island’s history.
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