A NUMBER of States members contacted this newspaper after this column was critical of the lukewarm efforts to tackle public sector expenditure to say that they agreed with the thrust of the comments.

In each case, the deputies have been making their own attempts to improve things but are not achieving much progress.

Another is making a further attempt tomorrow, with an amendment to the States Strategic Plan which, if successful, would see £125,000 diverted for a review of the terms and conditions of all staff.

Given that funding the review would divert money from a proposed cancer screening initiative, it is unlikely to go ahead. However, its supporters can take comfort from the fact that there is already a wealth of expert and independent information available at Frossard House that would make the review largely unnecessary.

From the work of the Audit Commission, disbanded in 2003 by the States because it was too robustly independent, to that of Graham Robinson’s 2008 report into the role of the States as employer and, more recently, the David Hogg report into the airport firefighter industrial action, there is no shortage of guidance on what the problems are – or what the solutions should be.

The problem, as we have been highlighting, is the absence of will.

Indeed, the chief minister touched on it in his one-man radio phone-in on Sunday when he called for an improved leadership structure within the civil service. Yet that was exactly what the Robinson report urged, as a matter of high priority, nearly three years ago.

Until the States of Guernsey’s senior management team is identified – which should be the chief officers of Treasury, HSSD, Public Services, Home and Education – and are reporting to the chief executive, no progress can be made.

At the moment, unbelievable as it is, the head of the civil service does not task his lieutenants, far less monitor their performance against achieving corporate objectives.

While that might not be his fault under the current structure, it does explain the absence of joined up government at a departmental level.

What it does not account for, however, is the lack of progress in resolving it.