Leale’s Yard ready for housing, a new tax system in place, helping parents back to work (and some more plans) - P&R unveils how it intends to improve Guernsey this term
Policy and Resources has unveiled its Government Work Plan, pivoting away from previous, expansive lists of objectives toward a focused commitment on five "super priorities."
This is designed to produce results that directly alleviate the pressures that affect daily life, including "limited housing options, ageing infrastructure, geopolitical disruption, and rising demand for health and care services," its report says.
So by the end of this States, if successful Leale’s Yard will be cleared and ready for housing to be built, tax reformed with a new system in place starting in 2028, and design work completed for new infrastructure at the harbours.
A new healthcare model will also have been agreed, which will top on both primary and secondary healthcare, while a renewed focus on young children and families will include supporting more partners getting back into the workplace.
“One of the criticisms of the GWP last term was that it listed so many workstreams that left us without clarity on what the priorities actually were,” said P&R President Lindsay de Sausmarez.
“With this iteration of the GWP, we’ve identified some “super priorities” that are the essential building blocks for our economy and the most pressing work that we as a government need to progress.”
The GWP 2026–2029 is presented as an "evolution of the previous term’s GWP" and has three “high-level areas of focus” as well as these five priorities.
The areas of focus
Foundations for Our Future: This area concentrates on the essential enablers of the Island’s long-term prosperity: the economy, housing, infrastructure, and support for children and families.
P&R views this focus as critical to ensuring Guernsey remains an attractive place to live and work, preventing the potential departure of businesses and younger generations.
Key challenges addressed here include the persistent housing shortages, aging national infrastructure (such as harbours and flood defenses), and global competition impacting the financial services sector. This area is tasked with directing investment into these fundamental concerns to safeguard core Island needs
Island Resilience: Focused on securing today and navigating future disruption, Island Resilience aims to stabilize public finances, maintain international standing, ensure secure essential services, and enhance government’s digital capacity
This domain addresses the demographic pressure of an aging population, which strains public finances through rising demands for pensions and healthcare, and geopolitical disruption that exposes Guernsey to international regulatory changes and supply chain vulnerabilities. The long-term fiscal stability required to maintain essential services is highlighted as a foundational element of this focus area
Sustainable Wellbeing: This centers on embedding policies that promote health and wellbeing throughout life, specifically committing to the transformation of Guernsey’s health and social care system to meet rapidly growing needs sustainably The core driver here is the rapid increase in the proportion of older people, threatening to overburden and financially undermine health and care services. This area commits to securing islanders’ access to integrated services while mitigating future pressure through prevention and early intervention.
The new plan is structured to absorb the long-term commitments and deferred issues from the previous term, which struggled due to severe financial and resource constraints.
A range of significant policy reviews were actively deferred during a mid-term reset, which the new Assembly must now pick up or reschedule.
These included a review of primary education, the legal status of cannabis, a review of end-of-life care, a review wildlife and habitat legislation, third party planning appeals and employment protection measures including redundancy pay.
In its end of term report on the last government work plan, the previous P&R noted that ongoing legislative demands, such as the restructure of the social security contributions system and the introduction of a Goods and Services Tax (GST), were highly likely to absorb large amounts of policy development and drafting capacity, potentially delaying other wider matters.
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