THE government will be required to provide £500,000 in funding towards the regeneration of St Helier, if proposals submitted by a backbench politician are backed by the States Assembly.
Deputy Inna Gardiner has submitted an amendment to the forthcoming Budget, calling for ministers to follow through on their commitment to revitalise parts of town, in partnership with the parish of St Helier.
In the report accompanying her proposition, Deputy Gardiner said that improvements to town had been one of the common strategic priorities published by the Council of Ministers, and that a sum of £500,000 for neighbourhood improvements had been supported as part of a previous Budget covering 2025 to 2028.
The representative for St Helier North said that as none of this money had been spent in 2025, it should be specifically itemised in the Budget and split equally through amounts of £167,000 for each of the next three years (2026-28 inclusive).
“This approach reflects the current budget limitations while honouring the commitment made by the States Assembly,” she said. “It also provides a practical and deliverable mechanism to accelerate improvements in the areas where residents have long endured the consequences of successive government decisions to concentrate housing growth in St Helier without proportional investment in the surrounding infrastructure.”
The outcome, she added, would be to “modernise neighbourhood streets, improve pedestrian safety and contribute to safer cycling networks”.
Money for the investment proposed by Deputy Gardiner would, she said, be provided by the inclusion of a corresponding decrease in part of the Budget allocating money to infrastructure and public realm work.
A condition of the investment would be that the level of funding would be matched by the parish – Deputy Gardiner cited recent work on Halkett Street as a successful example of such partnership work.
Deputy Gardiner said the parish had already carried out regeneration on Pomona Road and had started on Poonah Road, with the potential to accelerate the work and extend to areas including Clearview Street, Savile Street, Belmont Road and Great Union Road.
“The additional funding will act both to accelerate the regeneration of town neighbourhoods and also enable the parish of St Helier to address more complex and challenging regeneration projects which are currently constrained by a lack of funds,” she said.
The Budget and a raft of amendments – currently totalling 34 – is scheduled to be debated by the Assembly during the second week of December.
