Guernsey’s newest Deputy wants to make the island safer for everyone and he wants to make it easier for local youngsters to buy their own homes when they grow up.
An emotional Ross Le Brun was voted in to the States overnight, on his fourth election attempt over a decade.
He stood unsuccessfully in the Castel in 2016 and in the island wide elections in 2020 and 2025, but he topped the polls in the first by-election under the current system.
The results were late in being announced, at nearly 01:00, but those gathered at Beau Sejour ahead of the declaration all seemed united in their belief that Mr Le Brun would succeed on this occasion.
“I was being primed beforehand, not that anyone actually knew, but a lot of estimates based on the different straw polls… Bailiwick Express did one, the Press did one. Horace did one on Guernsey People Have Your Say, and Luke did one on The People’s Trust, and I topped all of them, and I really appreciate it.
“It was nice to see, but I didn’t put any stock in them really because I know how it feels like when you put your soul in to something and you’re turned away. But this time was different.”
Deputy-elect Le Brun amassed 953 votes – ahead of former Deputy Carl Meerveld who came second with 891.
Forward Guernsey party member Julie Anne Headington was third with 634 votes.
Now his seat in the States has finally been confirmed, Deputy-elect Le Brun said he has one simple plan.
“Work,” he said simply.
“I need to get on a committee so I’ve got colleagues to work with and be involved in work streams and obviously I’ve got my ideas for housing and this is why I need colleagues to persuade to support me on a Requete for starter homes,” he explained.
“Ultimately, what I’d like to do with the time I’m going to have is to make people proud of me. I want to do something that benefits the island. I’d like my nipper to be able to go to school and his friends say ‘oh, what your dad did was really good’.”
Deputy-elect Le Brun said he will go for the now vacant seat on Employment and Social Security, a committee he worked with as a Non-States Member between 2020 and 2025.
Whatever role he gets in the States, he said he will keep his young son and his peers in mind when pushing his political policies.
“There are things that I’d like to do and my job now is to get the public behind me to tell the other deputies ‘yeah, Ross has got a good idea, why don’t we do it?’ because that’s part of the battle, it’s taking the public with you, and I believe I can. I’ve done it for this election, and I was pretty open with what I was standing on.
“To say the last election was a vote on GST, and not that I was pro GST, but (I think) if you have to do it, if there’s no other options, then at least there are mitigations to help protect low earners, and I still got voted in.
“I still got voted in after being called anti-car, just because I want to make kids safe on their bikes on the road. So I believe that as much as people like to be negative about certain things, that there is strong support out there for the things I’m saying otherwise, I wouldn’t be stood here talking to you now.”
Addressing allegations that he is planning to make the island one-way and will try and force people to cycle everywhere, Deputy-elect Le Brun said that is not what he is about.
“I want Guernsey to be somewhere my son can choose to say ‘I’d like to live here’, instead of everything you see on Facebook which is just miserable, people saying ‘the kids don’t want to stay here, they want to leave’, well, my kid doesn’t.
“He’s more comfortable than other kids because we’ve got our own home and we were lucky with that, because there just aren’t homes for lower earners like we were, but I want to make the island a better place for him, and by making it a better place for him, it’s not selfish, because that makes it a better place for everybody else’s kids as well and traveling is a big part of that.
“Everybody uses the roads two or three times a day and it’s just something we become blind to. It’s like when you leave something on the floor in the hallway, after a while you don’t even realise it and just walk past it, and it’s the same as things like pavement driving. People have just got used to it, and that needs to change. It’s not sustainable and some children have been hit walking to school in roads like the Ramee, although that doesn’t have pavement, but that’s also part of the problem.
“I’m not all about that, it’s just I want homes for people to be able to buy, and I want Guernsey to feel like it used to when I was a kid in the 80s. I remember there was more to do here and the island was just like a little holiday place and that’s what it felt
like to me.”