Earlier this month the States agreed to make £70 million in staff savings in order to plug a predicted £145 million financial deficit by 2019.
Although no redundancies have been confirmed in any department, a senior Planning official has said the number of staff will ‘probably’ be getting smaller.
The industry is currently enjoying a boom, with 300 extra jobs created in the last year, in addition to the launch of a number of major projects, including the building of the new police station at Green Street and the redevelopment of the Southampton Hotel.
And with several more projects, including the Jersey International Finance Centre, the redevelopment of the former Jersey College for Girls site and the planned construction of a new Les Quennevais School on the horizon, Martin Clancy, the managing director of Dandara, has warned that the loss of planning officers could seriously slow the sector’s growth.
‘The construction industry is in a very good place at the moment and that’s really positive, but I think we have been ignoring what could be a big problem,’ he said.
‘With the likely cutbacks in the Planning Department, how are they going to cope with an increase in applications?
‘It’s not a problem at the moment, but it will be a major problem if applications double and they reduce the number of staff at the same time.
‘We want our government to be investing in a growing market.
‘Because of the improving economy there are now more applications, and as everything has to go through the planning process, they won’t be able to process things at a quick enough rate.
‘We could have a major problem of getting schemes off the ground because everything goes through that channel to start with.’
However, Yannick Filleul, the business manager at the Planning Department, has moved to reassure construction firms that applications will not stall.
‘We are going to be looking at our numbers, and like other States departments they will probably be getting smaller,’ he said. ‘We will not allow applications to stall – that is certain.
‘With the new law coming through, a lot of minor building changes that would previously have required planning permission will not require permission.
‘That means that we will be able to relocate the staff that would have worked on those onto larger applications.
‘As there is more confidence in the market, we have seen an increase in the number of applications.
‘We do not know exactly what will happen to our numbers of staff, but whatever happens, we will make sure our resources are used in the right area and obviously make sure that our current service levels are maintained.’
