One of the things to come out of the Assembly last week was the sense that the spending juggernaut that is the States of Guernsey has finally been tamed.

As the Treasury minister put it, the runaway train has been brought under control and congratulations are due to those who made it happen.

While that is undoubtedly the case, it is also appropriate to question how sustainable this is.

Cultures and attitudes in the departments may have changed radically but islanders have seen no visible signs of a structural change in the way government does business.

There is no performance-related pay, the unsustainable and unaffordable pension scheme remains in place, there have been no redundancies and some chief officers have used accumulated savings to fund day-to-day expenditure.

Numbers of staff have actually increased and the Financial Transformation Programme has failed to deliver the promised savings.

So while the year-end position is much better than it could have been – and taxpayers will be grateful for that – it is premature to conclude that the States really has got its house in order.

In practical terms, what happened is that the departments have voluntarily accepted reduced budget increases recommended by Treasury. They did so for three reasons: the current economic climate, to meet public expectations and because of peer pressure fortuitously applied by the new man running Health and Social Services.

Unless all the departments are now wedded to doing more with less, to rigorous performance management and to concentrating solely on those essential services that cannot or should not be provided by the private sector, the situation is not sustainable.

As Tribal Consulting discovered, after 30 years of steadily rising budgets, ‘operating within this funding environment has meant departments have, in many instances, been able to provide “gold-plated” services or indeed services where there is no clear rationale at all for government intervention. There has also been no imperative to deliver services efficiently’.

So while this year’s expenditure may be on track, it is too soon to conclude that the States of Guernsey has abandoned its profligate ways.