In brief: Former England netball captain and Commonwealth Games gold medallist Serena Kersten, now Assistant Economic Development Minister with responsibility for sport, has spoken about the transformative power of sporting facilities. She outlined her ambitions for investment at Les Quennevais and the FB Fields, acknowledged the financial constraints facing her brief, and called for greater access to school facilities outside hours.
From the Court to the Council of Ministers
There are not many politicians who can claim to have captained their country at sport and won a Commonwealth Games gold medal before entering the States Assembly, but Senator Serena Kersten is one of them. Speaking in a recent interview reported by the Jersey Evening Post, the still relatively new Assistant Economic Development Minister with responsibility for sport reflected on what first ignited her passion for physical activity: arriving in Bath at the age of 14 to train and being overwhelmed by the quality of the facilities on offer.
“I was like ‘oh my God, this is incredible. I want to run on that court’,” she said. “It’s the power that facilities have for a community because it shows that you value them. You think someone really wants me to train here, spend my money here and be here.”
That formative experience carries obvious weight for someone who also spent her younger years at Fort Regent and Les Quennevais Sports Centre here in Jersey. Senator Kersten moved to the island from her native Peterborough at the age of eight, and she credits the accessibility of sport she found here as having had an incalculable impact on her life.
The Fort, the Fields and the Funding Gap
The big question, of course, is what she can actually do about Jersey’s sporting estate now that she holds ministerial responsibility for it. The honest answer, by her own admission, is that it is complicated. Senator Kersten does not have her own budget. She is dependent on working with ministerial colleagues across Economic Development, Education and Infrastructure to secure any meaningful change, and the government is, as she put it, “tightening its belt”.
“It makes all of these things incredibly difficult and I’m not the only person struggling with no growth bids,” she acknowledged, pointing to the forthcoming “Investing in Jersey” process as a potential avenue for funding, while noting that competition for those funds will be fierce.
On Fort Regent, a facility she once loved as a teenager and has been openly critical of previous governments for neglecting, she was candid about the political reality. “If it requires an investment of a hundred-odd million, then I think that the argument for sport becomes less and less because you need commercial entities that are going to ensure it washes its face,” she said. The netball community, which uses Oakfield extensively, is under considerable pressure and badly needs another two-court facility, but she accepts that the Fort’s future is unlikely to be resolved on sporting grounds alone.
More achievable, she suggested, are investments at Les Quennevais and the FB Fields, which she described as “two amazing opportunities.” The FB Fields in particular, she believes, could serve as a “hub for sport,” benefiting not only the athletics community but also the densely populated surrounding area and its families.
Unlocking the School Gates
One of Senator Kersten’s more striking observations concerned the sharp drop in physical activity among young people as they move through the education system. At primary school, where play is emphasised, 65 per cent of children are categorised as very active. By secondary school, that figure falls to below 20 per cent. She said she is working to understand the causes and what support needs to be put in place.
A related concern is the underuse of school facilities outside regular hours. A recent review of 20 primary schools found that only seven opened up their facilities to the community. Senator Kersten was direct about her frustration: “Too many gates are locked.” She pointed to inner-city London schools that deliberately open their facilities after hours to tackle gang crime, and argued that if it works there, it can certainly work in Jersey, where the challenges are far less acute.
“It’s about working with schools to get them to understand the huge benefit of informal access to activity,” she said, adding that a child who has a poor experience of sport, or is told to get off a field, loses confidence and is less likely to be active again.
She also welcomed the recently published Common Strategic Policy and its stated ambition to “improve the public realm, community spaces and sports facilities across the whole Island,” seeing it as a useful platform from which to make the case for sport within government.
On the Island Games front, Senator Kersten welcomed additional funding announced this week to help Jersey athletes travel to next year’s Games in the Faroe Islands, but was clear that a more co-ordinated approach is needed in future. “For some it’s too late already and they’ve said no to their discipline,” she said, adding that representing Jersey at sport is “part of our identity as an island.”
Source: Jersey Evening Post
