Office of the Chief Executive: Transfer of funds to Growth, Housing and Environment

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A decision made on 16 July 2020

Decision Reference: MD-E-2020-0026
Decision Summary Title :	Transfer of funds OCE to GHE			Date of Decision Summary:	07 July 2020
Decision Summary Author:	Group Director – Economy			Decision Summary: Public or Exempt?	Public
Written Report title:	Transfer of funds OCE to GHE			Date of Written Report:	07 July 2020
Written Report author:	Group Director – Economy			Written Report: Public or exempt?	Public
Subject: Goods and Borders budget transfer from the Office of the Chief Executive (OCE) to the Growth Housing and Environment (GHE) Department.
Decision(s): To transfer the sum of £131,500 from OCE to GHE to allow GHE to employ the required resource to deliver planned coordination and technical and policy development under the Goods and Borders Cluster.
Reason(s) for decision: The Government Plan allocated a total of £450,000 to allow the Goods and Borders Cluster, run by Economy, to deliver the coordination, technical expertise and analysis required to undertake an assessment of the UK FTA negotiations. The Goods and Borders Cluster was a blended team across GHE, however now that Economy has been moved to OCE, funds needs to be transferred back to GHE for the required resource to be allocated correctly.
Resource Implications: No resource implications.
Action required: Treasury to ensure transfer of allocated funds from OCE business unit to NCR012 GHE business unit IEF040.
Signature: Senator Lyndon Farnham		Position: Minister for Economic Development, Tourism, Sport and Culture
Date Signed:			Date of Decision (If different from Date Signed):

Office of the Chief Executive: Transfer of funds to Growth, Housing and Environment

Office of the Chief Executive

Ministerial Decision

Goods and Borders Cluster Government Plan funding transfer

Purpose of the Report

For the Minister to approve the transfer of £131,500 from the budget of OCE (NCR012) to GHE which represents the proportion of the £450,000 Goods and Borders Cluster Government Plan funding that was allocated to support the Environment and Regulation functions within GHE and to ensure the allocated funding is in the right place to allow for the continued delivery of GHE relevant roles and responsibilities during the post Brexit transition period.

Background

There is a requirement for the Government of Jersey to engage with the UK and the EU to negotiate appropriate arrangements within the UK/EU Future Economic Partnership (FEP). The FEP will be negotiated following the UK’s exit from the European Union, regardless of whether this is an agreed withdrawal or a No Deal Brexit, albeit that the negotiations will be within different structures and timescales according to whether they take place in a deal or in a no-deal scenario. To this end, the UK is currently preparing its negotiating positions, and Jersey must do the same and should be appropriately resourced to do so.

External Relations proposed three negotiating clusters, these being ‘Goods and Borders’, ‘Services and Digital’ and ‘Security’ and 2019 departments were asked to consider the necessary resource.

After a bid from GHE, the Government Plan allocated £450k to Economy to manage the Goods and Borders Cluster. At a broad, cross-departmental level, the work involves analysis of the structures and architecture within free trade agreements and the UK-EU future relationship, to better understand how these might bind Government’s options or present opportunities; and it includes identifying and articulating the overarching priorities for the Government of Jersey within Jersey-UK negotiations.

Details

To achieve the required complement of expertise the Goods and Borders designed a team of technical experts. The team was developed to provide a blended team comprising economy, environment and regulatory officers to give a cross GHE response.

However, now that Economy has been transferred into the OCE the funding needs to be re-allocated to ensure correct resourcing within both OCE and GHE and to provide GHE with its ‘share’ of the Government Plan funding pro-rata for 2020.

It has been calculated that the GHE share for 2020 is a total of £131,500 to deliver the required coordination and project management functions to ensure requests by the UK Government are dealt with and considered appropriately – see below. Many of the negotiation positions require insight from a technical policy position but also in respect of trade and the domestic economy. It is therefore vital that that this coordination continues to ensure all responses are in line with the Government of Jersey policy positions.

Goods and Borders Cluster funds to transfer from the £450k allocation:

Contractor – May to Dec 20 – 171 days (taking away Bank Holidays but not including any leave) @£500 per day = £85.5k. He transferred to GHE 1st May.

Marbral – Transferred to GHE 15th May to Dec 20 - (approx. 141 days @£325 per day ) £46k.

Total to transfer £131,500.

Recommendation

The Minister approves the transfer of £131,500 from OCE to GHE.

Written by:	Group Director – Economy

Approved by:

Ministerial Decision Case Ref: