New main States building to be announced “imminently”

Thursday 26 July 2018

States plans to house all civil servants under one roof are to be unveiled “imminently” - with the former Royal Bank of Canada building in Broad Street rumoured to be a frontrunner for the new HQ.

Speaking at a Corporate Services Scrutiny Panel hearing yesterday, new States Chief Executive Charlie Parker said that the States were currently “in commercial negotiations” to secure a new property to replace Cyril Le Marquand House, which could be then turned into housing.

Once completed, he said that States services would be predominantly delivered from La Motte Street (the current Social Security site) and the new site.

It comes as part of Mr Parker’s bid to form ‘One Government’ - a structure whereby all States departments are in close contact with each other, and services are mostly delivered from one place. It is rumoured that the current Royal Bank of Canada building on Broad Street is one of the top candidates to serve this function.

Pictured: The RBC building on Broad Street is rumoured to be one of the frontrunners to be the new States HQ.

Mr Parker added that nine-storey Cyril Le Marquand House, which has served as the States’ main premises for crucial services such as the Taxes Office for decades, could potentially make way for housing or keyworker accommodation. Demolition may also be on the cards, with Mr Parker remarking that the building’s “footprint” had to be considered, and that it was unlikely many islanders “would be sad” to see it go.

He said that the Whitehall-style structure would allow the States to “dispose” of several buildings, which would raise revenue for the States.

The Le Bas Centre would be an example of this, he said. Describing it as a “pretty poor rundown place”, Mr Parker said it was no longer appropriate for children, vulnerable people and families to use the facility. Eagle House and Liberty House have therefore been selected to deliver services dedicated to vulnerable adults and children. 

During the previous States Assembly, the intention had been to centralise all states functions within La Motte Street to “regenerate that part of town” and “create an anchor”. Mr Parker said that this was no longer the strategy of the current Council of Ministers, but that there were discussions of an interim solution and that a debate around the subject may form part of a future Medium Term Financial Plan. 

Pictured: Social Security site La Motte Street had previously been considered as the main building.

The news comes one month after the HR team based at Cyril Le Marquand House cleared their desks and moved across town to La Motte Street, paving the way for a new hub for Ministers in the island’s main government building.

During the Scrutiny hearing, Mr Parker was challenged on the savings his plans to overhaul the civil service would make. He declined to provide an exact figure, but stated: “What I can say is that it’s not in the millions, but in the tens of millions.”

He said that the savings would mostly be achieved through his proposed restructure of each department, which he previously described as "fiefdoms in law, with a siloed mentality." According to Mr Parker, each had their own individual finance department and “goodness knows what they did with IT”. By removing this “duplication” across the civil service and creating single entities to manage States accounts and digital services, for example, he said that considerable savings could be achieved.

“All the wasted costs from that duplication have been quite considerable,” he commented.

Pictured: States Chief Charlie Parker being challenged by the Panel Chairman, Senator Kristina Moore.

But costs might go up rather than down in the Communications Department, new Communications Director Stephen Hardwick, who was also in attendance, said.

Asked by Chairman of the Panel Senator Kristina Moore over whether his plans to reform States Comms, which involve recruiting over 30 full-time members of staff, he said that he hoped it would be “at least cost neutral”, requesting that she “bear in mind” that the department intended to introduce new services that they hadn’t offered previously.

One of those was reforming internal communications – a change recommended after an audit of States communications found that staff members were more likely to find out about government decisions affecting them through Express or the JEP than through their own place of work.

He added that there were also “monetisable benefits” to enhanced States communications by “encouraging behaviour change through effective communications.” If islanders can be warned to get flu jabs or undertake smear tests, for example, he said that this could lead to Health Department savings.

Nonetheless, he admitted that not everyone had been “enthusiastic” about the proposed change, revealing that six or seven staff had left the department. “None of whom have gone at my behest,” he clarified, adding that they may have instead been “jaded” through being in post for a while and not being able to achieve what they wanted.

Pictured: Charlie Parker was also joined by Director of Financial Services Transformation, Camilla Black, and Assistant Chief Minister Richard Buchanan, who said the Council of Ministers backed Mr Parker's civil service restructuring plans.

Panel Member Deputy Steve Ahier grilled the Chief Executive over the amount of employment licenses for newcomers appointed under his reformed government, such as the influx of new Director Generals of which there are around 30.

Mr Parker responded that he believed 25 licenses to have been issued this year “for a mixture of interims and permanent staff”. He said that some of these were specialists in HR, while others worked in GDPR and cybersecurity – two areas where Jersey had a skills deficit. “[We] didn’t have that on-island… and weren’t going to meet our legal obligations,” he explained. He said that those staff would be in post until December, at which point their licenses would be reviewed. 

Panel Member Deputy Jess Perchard questioned what was being done to promote women in civil service roles, noting that several female Director General applicants had dropped out late in the appointments process, and to better promote such roles to local people.

Mr Parker acknowledged that “we haven’t got enough women leaders… We don’t represent the full community living here in Jersey and we need to do more to encourage people to come through in that sense.”

Resolving that, he said, would be about changing views on working within the civil service, as few school leavers consider a career in the public sector and there is no graduate programme in place to accommodate this.

He added that the States hadn’t “created the right type of long-term development for stars that are in the organisation at the moment”, but said that he had already spotted some “real talent” that “with the report support will become the Director Generals of tomorrow.”