By Carl Parslow
JERSEY businesses are not asking for favours. They are not seeking exemptions from rules designed to protect the Island. They are asking for something more basic, and economically significant: time.
A café wants to refit its frontage. A shop needs new signage or an accessibility upgrade. A small office wants to install internal partitions to make better use of its space. These are routine, low-impact changes. Yet they are routinely channelled through a planning or building bye law system designed for developments of far greater scale and complexity.
For large businesses, delay is a cost to be factored into a balance sheet. For small businesses, it is often decisive. Rent accrues regardless. Seasonal trade is missed permanently, not deferred. Hiring decisions are postponed. Capital sits idle. Where decision-making is slow, investment simply goes elsewhere, sometimes off-Island, sometimes not made at all. In economic terms, delay raises the cost of doing business in Jersey without delivering a corresponding public benefit in many cases.
Jersey’s planning and building bye law framework has served the Island well in protecting amenity and heritage. But it is less well calibrated for the routine adaptation on which a competitive local economy depends. Changes of use are treated as “major” by default, irrespective of scale. Even applications described as “minor” can take months once validation, advertising and internal review are complete, timescales that increasingly look out of step with those faced by competing jurisdictions.
This is not merely anecdotal. A government-commissioned review concluded in 2023 that the planning system was structurally misaligned with the needs of small businesses. It found that minor works, such as signage, shopfront alterations or internal fit-outs, often require full planning permission, with no fast-track route. Changes of use for small premises were routinely categorised as “major”, triggering processes better suited to large developments. Targets for validation and determination were repeatedly missed, and by a growing margin.
The result is not over-regulation, but misdirected regulation, regulation that imposes cost without improving outcomes.
At business level, delay raises uncertainty and fixed costs. At economy-wide level, it slows the reuse of existing buildings and the redeployment of capital to productive use. Premises remain vacant longer than necessary. Investment decisions are deferred or redirected. In a world where capital is mobile and choice is plentiful, even modest frictions accumulate into a competitiveness problem.
This matters in Jersey, where small and medium-sized businesses dominate the non-financial services economy, and where retail, hospitality and personal services underpin local employment and spending. These sectors are seasonal and highly timing-sensitive. A six-month delay is not neutral. It can wipe out an entire trading opportunity, and once confidence is lost, it is slow to return.
The 2023 Barriers to Business report by Jersey Business echoed these concerns. Businesses reported that “planning is needed for the smallest things”, with delays of months common even for low-impact works. Many cited missed seasonal windows, rising costs and projects quietly abandoned. The report also noted that requiring permission for every small change, signs, internal alterations, creates a backlog that clogs the system and slows applications of all types.
Why does Jersey not already operate a faster route for such cases? The explanation appears to lie less in statute than in long-standing practice.
Planning on the Island remains predominantly permission-led rather than rules-led. Instead of defining in advance which categories of low-risk business works are acceptable, the system relies on case-by-case approval even where outcomes are predictable. In a small jurisdiction, caution is understandable. Decisions are visible and challenge is a real concern. But when process becomes the primary tool for risk management, speed, adaptability and competitiveness are the casualties.
From a governance perspective, this is inefficient. Scarce professional capacity is consumed by low-risk, high-frequency decisions, while businesses absorb the cost of delay. The Island pays twice: once in administrative effort, and again in lost economic activity.
There is perhaps a more balanced alternative.
Jersey could introduce a clear, published menu of pre-approved business works. Where a business selects from that menu, and uses registered, accredited professionals, it would be able to proceed without awaiting formal permission. Oversight would remain; delay would not.
Such a menu might include shopfront alterations, signage, awnings, internal fit-outs and accessibility improvements. These are precisely the changes that keep buildings occupied, streets active and capital productively employed. Anything not on the menu would fall outside the scheme and continue through the standard planning process. Discretion would be focused where it genuinely adds value.
The economic case is straightforward. Shorter decision cycles reduce uncertainty, lower barriers to incremental investment and improve Jersey’s relative attractiveness as a place to do business. Fewer vacant units support confidence and footfall. Businesses are more likely to invest locally rather than defer, downsize or look beyond the Island.
Speed under such a system would be earned rather than assumed. Participation would require the use of registered designers, architects and contractors who understand the Island Plan, certify compliance and carry appropriate professional and insurance responsibility. Risk is managed through competence and accountability, not blanket delay.
Encouragingly, the government has acknowledged the issue and processing times have improved. That is welcome. But the underlying problem remains: too many low-risk, everyday business changes still require full permission, creating friction that Jersey’s economy can increasingly ill afford.
Delays to basic business adaptations are not a mere bureaucratic inconvenience. They are a drag on productivity, a deterrent to incremental investment and, over time, a contributor to the erosion of competitiveness.
A menu-based approach is not deregulation. It is proportionate regulation: clearer, faster and better aligned with the realities of a small, open, service-based economy.
Lost time means lost opportunity, and Jersey businesses and workers bear the cost. As the 2026 election approaches, candidates might usefully be asked a simple question: will they support the non-financial services sector that underpins local employment and economic resilience?
Born and educated in the Island, Carl Parslow is an experienced Jersey Advocate and notary public with over 25 years’ experience. He heads up Parslows LLP business legal services department, advising corporates and individuals on a range of issues with a particular emphasis on acting for Jersey owner-managed businesses. Outside of work, he enjoys rugby and cycling with Lasardines.
