States cuts adviser walks away with "little optimism" about prospect of savings

Tuesday 06 October 2015

The business leader drafted in to advise the States on efficiencies and saving money has quit the job after just seven months.

Kevin Keen – who used to run the Jersey Dairy and Jersey Post – has stepped down from the £650 per day advisory role, and says that he has little optimism in the States making the kind of efficiencies and savings that they need.

He and two experts from the UK were drafted in to advise ministers and chief officers with an independent view on how to save money and make the public sector spend resources more effectively.

The news that Mr Keen has walked away from the project comes on the day that ministers take their financial plans – partly based on making huge savings and efficiencies in the public sector – to the States for debate.

Mr Keen said: “I have done a piece of work and that’s it. Clearly, they have got a challenging period ahead of them to deliver the MTFP and its not possible to do it in a painless way. The whole community has got to shoulder some of the pain of addressing the deficit.”

Asked if he was optimistic about whether the States could make the kind of changes needed to turn it into an efficient and effective organisation, he said he didn’t have a huge amount of confidence.

“I would not say that I was optimistic about it. I would say there is a long way to go before you could be optimistic and they need to get on with it really,” he said.

The Chief Officers who run States departments were understood to have been unhappy that an independent view had been drafted in to review their plans and advise on efficiencies and cuts.

Mr Keen didn’t go as far as saying that they had stood in his way, but conceded that the role had been an “uphill challenge”.

He said: “I think that is fair. At the beginning it seemed to be a real urgency to get the change done, which is what we need. But as time has gone on that urgency has subsided as the whole thing has disappeared into the big process.”

Mr Keen was recruited in March along with UK experts Sir David Henshaw and Elisabeth Astall to give an independent view on efficiencies and savings.

Mr Keen, a former head of the Chamber of Commerce, took over the Jersey Dairy when it was struggling more than ten years ago and made almost 20% of the staff redundant to balance the books. He was then drafted in to be managing director of Jersey Post, which was also struggling – there almost 25% of staff ended up being made redundant or taking a pay cut.

His most recent role was as interim chief of the new tourism marketing body, Visit Jersey.