You may have heard of the proposal to build an undersea tunnel from Guernsey to Jersey and on to France. Perhaps you dismissed it as an absurd pipe dream and continued on with your day, maybe you even thought “what a great idea, but it’ll never happen.” We caught up with Kevin Keen, who has held a number of senior roles within Jersey’s business and charitable community, (including a number of short stints as an Advisor to the States of Jersey)  to hear his view on linking up the Islands.

2024 marks my 50th year in full time employment in Jersey.  I have been lucky to work and volunteer for lots of organisations many of which either had businesses in both islands or I was able to work with my Guernsey counterpart at Jersey Dairy, Jersey Post, JSPCA and AJC.

The challenges were very often common; a lack of scale, which meant costs were higher and locally, opportunities smaller. It always made sense to work with Guernsey colleagues and whenever we did cooperate, it was a real win win.

My experience made me wonder why our Governments could not cooperate a lot more to the advantage of all Channel Island citizens, and to be honest, I am still wondering.

A huge issue in Jersey is the cost of housing. There are many causes of this problem; clearly one is the amount of space available to build, not helped by an unhealthy dose of nimbyism. The shortage of affordable housing drives our young people away, impacts on physical and mental health, is a barrier to economic diversification and makes it difficult to recruit essential workers from outside of the Islands.  I have spent a lot of time thinking and writing about how Jersey might tackle it.

Linking our islands up with each other and Europe may seem like an outlandish idea, but I really believe it could solve many of the problems facing us, including the cost of housing and availability of workers, as well as creating some new opportunities.

For this reason I think a physical link is worthy of calm objective consideration of both the pros and the cons. Better drilling technology now exists and from what I understand the costs of tunnelling are much reduced

I totally get that some lack confidence in our Governments to do big things when they can’t decide where to put a hospital or how to facilitate and fund secondary education. I am also aware that public purses are no longer overflowing and as our populations get older our public finances will face further challenge.

But ever the optimist (and Channel Islander) I hope the opportunity to look at what has been achieved in other small islands will give Guernsey and Jersey the courage and vision to think bigger, and more joined up.

These are the personal views of Kevin Keen and do not reflect those of any organisation with which he is associated.