Proposed Budget (Government Plan) 2026-2029 (P.70/2025): eighteenth amendment (P.70/2025 Amd.(18)) – comments. Statistics Jersey – Administrative Support Funding
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STATES OF JERSEY
PROPOSED BUDGET (GOVERNMENT PLAN) 2026-2029 (P.70/2025): EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT (P.70/2025 AMD.(18)) – COMMENTS
Presented to the States on 4th December 2025 by the Council of Ministers
STATES GREFFE
2025 P.70 Amd.(18) Com.
COMMENTS
The Council of Ministers urges States members to reject this amendment as it requires unnecessary spending on administration.
The Cabinet Office already has administrative resources capable of supporting Statistics Jersey. If additional support is needed, it will be provided internally without expanding headcount or creating new budget lines. This is in line with the Government's general approach to curbing the growth of the public service.
Statistics Jersey's budget and headcount is included within the Cabinet Office department. Since the formation of this Council of Ministers, the Cabinet Office has saved almost £3.6 million in total. On a like-for-like comparison, it has reduced by 32.6 full time equivalent staff to a new total of 173.7 FTE, a 16% reduction.
The Corporate Services Scrutiny Panel (CSSP) amendment would undermine this reduction in Cabinet Office spend and staffing levels by embedding a permanent and unnecessary administrative resource in Statistics Jersey. It would introduce avoidable prescriptive requirements that would create inefficiencies and increase costs.
Background
The CSSP amendment proposes additional ring-fenced funding for Statistics Jersey, mandatory annual reports and reviews of statistical outputs, and increased staffing and administrative capacity. While the Council of Ministers supports the principle of enabling Statistics Jersey to fulfil its legal duties, the CSSP proposal introduces unnecessary bureaucracy and cost. These measures would divert resources from priority areas and expand the public service unnecessarily.
Rationale for Rejecting the Amendment
Adding staff and introducing permanent, purely administrative resource increases costs and bureaucracy, which runs counter to the Cabinet Office's work to streamline operations and reduce unnecessary expenditure. Rejecting the amendment and enabling the Cabinet Office to deploy resources to Statistics Jersey as and when required guarantees full compliance with the Statistics and Census (Jersey) Law 2018 while maintaining flexibility in resource allocation.
In budget terms, Statistics Jersey has recently benefited from the reversal of two other Amendments to its budget. The Budget 2024-27 included an initial requirement for Stats Jersey to contribute savings of £142k in 2024, £114k in 2025 and £75k in 2026.
However, an adopted Amendment to the Budget 2025-28 reversed £78k of those savings in order to reintroduce the Business Tendency Survey. Then Proposition P.49/2025 required £40k to be transferred from the Cabinet Office to Statistics Jersey to return the Jersey Opinions and Lifestyle Survey back to an annual survey.
The money for both reversals was found from a reduction in policy support to Ministers in other areas of the Cabinet Office. By contrast to those two previous reversals, this Amendment would not result in a new statistical product and so the Council of Ministers urges States members to reject it.
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Conclusion
The Cabinet Office has already agreed to provide support from within its existing administrative resources to assist Statistics Jersey. Rejecting this amendment ensures Statistics Jersey can meet its statutory duties without imposing prescriptive, resource- intensive requirements under the Budget.
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