A breakfast meeting yesterday organised by the Guernsey Chamber of Commerce saw representatives of the Public Services Department  give a polished and informative presentation on the proposed £80m. redevelopment of Guernsey airport.

It reinforced the level of planning that has gone into the long overdue refurbishment of the runway and associated areas and explained why runway end safety areas had to be extended to meet revised safety requirements.

Perhaps of equal interest to the business audience, however, was to what degree local contractors will be involved – and benefit from – what is by island standards a huge contract. Unfortunately, the answer appeared to be ‘very little’.

It is also clear that when the department and contractor-in-waiting Lagan were telling the media that they could not really answer such questions at this stage, they were being economical with their comments.

The maximum of 150 staff that Lagan intends housing locally probably represents all the labour it needs and, while 230,000 tonnes of aggregate will be stockpiled at Longue Hougue, not much of it will be Guernsey granite.

There are reasons for that and the PSD minister was at pains to explain that unless the main contractor had its own staff at outset, it would quickly become a very bad neighbour if it started poaching staff locally.

But while the audience understood the explanations, there was also a sense that the reasons for them being necessary were not insurmountable.

Given a longer lead time, Ronez, for example, could have stockpiled aggregate and more local labour could have been sourced.

This is not to be critical of PSD in particular, but there is no government expectation that local businesses should benefit when large amounts of taxpayer money are spent on capital projects and little more than an ‘…it would be nice if…’ steer given to UK contractors about using local labour and suppliers.

Business groups have urged the Policy Council to change its stance on this, but the response was a blunt: cheapest is best.

That is too black and white. Government needs to get the best value for money it can but what it spends should also provide the best value for the local community.