In brief: Deputy Lyndsay Feltham has proposed an amendment to the Council of Ministers’ Common Strategic Policy that would commit the Government of Jersey to developing and implementing a revised Disability and Inclusion Strategy by 2026–2030. The proposal would also require individual government departments to produce their own access and inclusion plans. Disabled Islanders would be central to shaping the updated strategy.
What Deputy Feltham Is Proposing
Deputy Lyndsay Feltham is seeking to add a formal commitment to the Council of Ministers’ Common Strategic Policy for 2026–2030, the Jersey Evening Post reports. The amendment would require the government to develop and implement a revised Disability and Inclusion Strategy, and would also bind individual departments to improving access to services and facilities through their own access and inclusion plans.
The proposal is not simply about writing a document and filing it away. Deputy Feltham has been explicit that the strategy must be put into practice. “The purpose of updating the strategy is to improve people’s lives, and the government must be able to demonstrate how its work contributes to that objective,” she wrote. That is a pointed reminder that government strategies have a habit of gathering dust on shelves rather than producing results in the real world.
Crucially, Deputy Feltham argues that disability inclusion is not a matter for one department alone. Her amendment recognises that barriers faced by disabled Islanders cut across education, employment, housing, transport, public services and community activities. “An updated strategy must therefore establish shared responsibility for removing the barriers disabled Islanders face in everyday life,” she said.
What the Plans Would Mean in Practice
Under the proposal, each government department would be required to consider the barriers affecting its own services and facilities. This would cover physical access, communication and the ways in which people obtain assistance. Departments would retain the freedom to decide the contents of their own plans, but those plans should influence how services are designed and delivered, and which improvements are prioritised.
Deputy Feltham has also stressed that disabled Islanders themselves must be involved in identifying the barriers they face and the changes that would make a meaningful difference. That is a sensible principle: the people who navigate these obstacles every day are better placed than any civil servant to say where the problems actually lie.
The amendment builds on earlier work. Deputy Feltham brought a similar amendment to the Common Strategic Policy in 2022, concerning accessible services and departmental access and inclusion plans, which the States Assembly adopted with revised wording. This new proposal takes that commitment further by requiring a fully revised strategy to be developed and implemented.
Why This Matters for Jersey
Jersey’s government is not short of strategies. What it has sometimes struggled with is translating those strategies into measurable improvements for the people they are supposed to help. Deputy Feltham’s insistence that the government must be able to demonstrate how its work contributes to improving lives is a welcome dose of accountability. Whether the Council of Ministers will accept the amendment, and whether departments will follow through if it passes, are questions that remain to be answered.
The breadth of the proposal is also significant. By placing disability inclusion across every department rather than treating it as a health issue alone, the amendment acknowledges that the barriers disabled Islanders face are woven into almost every aspect of daily life. That is a more honest and more useful framing than the usual approach of tucking such matters into a single ministry and hoping for the best.
Source: Jersey Evening Post
