MANIFESTO

Personal Details

Full Name: Kerensa Gardner
Phone Number: 07839 176616
Email: kerensa.gardner@outlook.com
Website: kerensagardner.co.uk

Manifesto Summary

Education and fairness are my passions; I taught here for ten years in Les Beaucamps and Grammar/Varendes and have spent two years working for Tribunals. I would like your vote: so I can make sure listening to parents, teachers and students is written into the new Education Law; so I can be part of a fresh start assembly which is transparent, cooperative, and focused on getting things done; so I can investigate why 8.9% of houses are unavailable for ordinary people to live in; so I can push for citizens’ assemblies to deal with the big issues close to people’s hearts like housing and education.

Key Points

No Frittering
GST is Unfair
We Must Find Another Way
Housing
Hard No To Homelessness
Housing
Let’s Get It Together
Education
Let’s Consult Parents & Keep Teachers
Health
We Can Build the Hospital and Improve Mental Health

No Frittering

We need to raise hundreds of millions to build the sixth form centre and the hospital and develop the East Coast let’s use the £2.5 million earmarked for a Victor Hugo centre on something more urgent.
We need to get all taxes collected within a tax year of tax returns. The tax department needs to clear the backlog.

GST is Unfair We Must Find Another Way

There may have to be tax raises, because keeping Guernsey from falling down is expensive, but GST is an unfair tax. No taxes should added to food or to fuel eating healthily and heating your home is expensive enough.

There are big global changes to corporate taxes on the way, which will increase Guernsey’s tax take by the end of 2027 meanwhile, we need government working to make more and better paid jobs for people from the island. The States must work together, in the committees, and in meetings, and with business, to make opportunities for Guernsey businesses.

Hard No to Homelessness

Everybody should have a home which is safe and affordable, and we must act together to make sure everybody does. Everybody wants young people to be able to buy their own homes, and everybody wants enough housing for young adults to get to choose to stay on the island if that’s what they want. Making sure everyone is properly housed must be a priority for the next States.
The best guess for how many people are sofa surfing or overcrowded or haven’t got a secure place is approximately 1100 some of them will be children. Government must work urgently with the third sector to sort out emergency housing.

Housing Let’s Get It Together

Almost 1 in 11 homes are not available for ordinary people to live in. Are they second homes, or holiday lets, or homes too big or too small for families who need them? Empty housing should be taxed, to encourage owners to either rent or sell it.

Cost of Housing

Rents are too high because there are not enough homes. We must make sure that housing licences are issued only for the numbers of houses we have.

Housing that makes people ill. We should find out how many properties have damp or other problems that make people ill, and the States should consider guaranteeing loans to repair accommodation. If properties are not repaired to a reasonable standard, the States should either buy them or manage their sale, for part owned housing or rental.

We should involve our communities island wide in decision making through citizens’ assemblies. Each parish would find volunteers and send representative citizens to consider planning matters which plainly lie close to people’s hearts.

Where and how do we build houses? If people come together from all over the island and think about a wide range of information, then they can decide whether to build publicly owned housing for a range of tenants, with fair but reviewable rents and long term leases, or non profit housing cooperatives where residents partly own and manage the buildings.

Education Let’s Consult Parents and Keep Teachers

Let’s get the new Education Law done following full consultation with parents and teachers and deputies.

Parents should have a choice of secondary schools.

We must hold on to teachers, especially in core subjects. I want to set up an independent Teachers’ Champion to deal with straightforward complaints, that could be fixed within a fortnight.

The States needs to show that it is screening all children for SEND by the end of Year 2, so we know those children are getting the help they need.

The numbers of children hitting maths and literacy milestones should also be published at the end of Year 2. These numbers should be shown for every year group as they progress to show students are staying on track. We need to have better lifelong chances to retake GCSEs or do functional skills qualifications. Our two biggest employment areas are construction and finance, and both need maths.

Health We Can Build the Hospital and Improve Mental Health

We must finish the hospital build, and we must deal with the lasting effects of Covid on physical and mental health.

The mental health problems are especially bad among young people. We need to make sure we have rock solid 24/7 support for mental health crises, so that anyone at that point can telephone for immediate help.

We need to build a Get Happy Get Great Mental Health programme for the island, with more free sports and activities, especially for younger people. Active cooperation between the States and Guernsey’s brilliant Third Sector can do great work on this.

Guernsey has a golden future let’s get it done.