Jersey’s population policy has just officially expired...

Monday 04 January 2016

It may be the top political priority for the public, but as of midnight on Thursday Jersey doesn’t have a population policy anymore.

The last policy expired on 31 December, meaning that right now, there’s no formal rules on the size of the Island’s population, and no official targets for immigration.

In 2014, politicians agreed a two-year interim policy that effectively kept the previous 2010 rules alive past the most recent elections.

Those rules did away with the idea of a cap on population, and instead set a “planning assumption” of an overall population increase of 325 people per year from immigration. But that target was surpassed in every year of the policy’s existence – the average overall immigration effect has been 575 people per year.

The last time that the issue of population was included in the Jersey Annual Social Survey it was listed as the top priority that the public wanted the Council of Ministers and the States to engage with – more than three-quarters of the population described themselves as concerned about immigration, with 39% “very concerned”.

There was no firm commitment to a population policy in the Strategic Plan that politicians agreed early last year, but one paragraph dropped a hint that ministers want to continue to allow people in, when they have specific skills needed to do necessary or productive jobs.

The plan said: "Inward migration has a key role to play in Jersey’s future. Employers will always need staff with skills, market knowledge and experience that is not immediately available locally.

"Our policy must continue to focus on migration which adds the greatest economic and social value, and only where local talent is not available."