REPLACING Highlands College, major upgrades to sporting facilities to support a bid to host the Island Games and thousands of new homes are part of an ambitious 25-year project to invest in Jersey’s capital infrastructure.
The Government is seeking to end decades of under-investment in the Island’s critical infrastructure with a multi-million pound strategy which also includes extending mains water and drainage to every home and a rolling programme of school refurbishments.
Several projects including the delivery of a new primary school at Gas Place and the redevelopment of the Ann Street Brewery site into a new state-of-the-art youth centre have already been announced.
Outlining his Investing in Jersey: 2026-2050 plan, Chief Minister Lyndon Farnham cited a determination to bring more structure to how public money is invested and break the cycle of “waiting for things to break”.
The construction of a new campus for further and higher education in central St Helier by 2032 is among the key ambitions, freeing up the Highlands site as one of the locations for affordable family housing, to be delivered at a rate of 400 homes per year over the next decade.
Priorities for the Island’s infrastructure include improvements to roads, a new headquarters for the Fire and Ambulance Services and the construction of new walking and cycle routes. The Island’s sporting facilities – including Fort Regent, FB Fields and Le Rocquier – are also set to receive significant investment, ahead of a planned Jersey bid to host the Island Games in 2035.
The investment programme will be underpinned by a new Capital Investment Fund designed to ringfence the required funding, reducing the risk of delay and short-term decision-making, and supporting more consistent delivery across political terms.
With around eight-and-a-half months until nominations for the 2026 election are open, Chief Minister Lyndon Farnham said he wanted to establish a stable platform for long-term public investment.
“We’ve developed a culture of waiting for things to break before we try and fix them, and when you combine that with increasing revenue expenditure, and you’ve got a problem where our capital investment has been shrinking quite significantly in real terms, and this plans will reverse that,” he said.
“It’s back to basics in many respects, going back to the stuff we really should be focusing on, rather than in the past when ministers have tended to trim their capital budgets in order to find revenue expenditure.
“If we keep putting things off, nothing will ever happen, so we’ve drawn a line in the sand – a lot of the work has been started in the last 18 months, and we we need to put a proper framework and funding mechanism around this so it doesn’t just evaporate with the new government.”
Deputy Farnham said the investment plan and the new fund had been unanimously supported by the Council of Ministers , with the intention of incorporating the proposals into the next Budget, which will be considered by the States Assembly in November.
Focusing on some of the main elements of the programme, Deputy Farnham highlighted the link between the falling birth rate and the challenges around housing for young Islanders and key workers.
“It’s completely unacceptable that most of our young people are not feeling confident about having a home,” he said. “That’s something we will address with Andium Homes, the Jersey Development Company and the private sector, focusing on affordable family homes and the expansion of the Homebuy and First Step schemes.”
While acknowledging that some projects such as the plans for further education and the Highlands site, or the regeneration of Fort Regent, were more likely to attract attention, ministers also intend to focus on less glamorous work involving wastewater, sea defences and the refurbishment of public buildings.
