Weekly round-up: Stories you may have missed

A swimmer became a record breaker and proposals were put forward to review animal welfare laws.

Here is a round-up of some of the stories from the past week in the Channel Islands.

The Government of Jersey's proposed budget has been criticised for offering "short-term fixes" and "no long-term thinking".

Deputy Helen Miles, the head of the Corporate Services Scrutiny Panel, questioned how plans would be funded after the panel published its review of the financial statement.

She also criticised the government's decision to reduce the grant to the social security fund so more money was available for day-to-day spending.

Treasury and Exchequer said it would respond to the panel's commends in due course.

Proposed changes to an animal welfare law are to be reviewed, the States of Jersey has said.

The Environment Scrutiny Panel is set to review draft updates to laws for protecting animal welfare in the island including new powers for licensing, enforcement and standards of care.

On 26 November politicians voted to introduce restrictions and controls for dogs classified as dangerous.

The scrutiny panel said it would examine how Jersey regulates the control of pets and livestock in public spaces to identify gaps, overlaps and areas where responsibilities between agencies were unclear.

The Ladies' College Guernsey "acted swiftly" after it was ordered to improve its security measures following an IT breach last year.

The Office of the Data Protection Authority said the college was unable to access several of its on-premises servers on 24 June 2024 and an investigation identified unauthorised access had been made to some of its systems.

An investigation carried out by the authority found while the college had systems in place to detect the suspicious authentication activity but it "did not implement appropriate processes to be notified of or monitor such detections".

It found the majority of encrypted information was not personal data and none related to students.

The Chief Pleas and Sark Electricity Limited have agreed to the appointment of Begbies Traynor as the valuer for compulsory purchase legislation.

The Government of Sark's Policy and Finance Committee said the method and basis of the valuation would be decided at a court hearing.

The committee said a date would be fixed by the court and it would likely take place in January 2026.

It follows an application from the Chief Pleas on 31 October to the Court of the Seneschal for the appointment of the valuer.

Filip Nowacki said he was "shocked" to break the European junior short course record in the 200m breaststroke.

The 18-year-old from Jersey recorded a new short course mark of two minutes 3.75 seconds (2:03.75) at the European Short Course Championships in Poland.

The world junior long course champion over 100m and 200m set the mark as he finished second in the semi-finals and will race in Saturday's final.

"It feels terrific. I wasn't expecting it at all, so to come away with that record, I was really shocked after the heats and really pleased," he told BBC Radio Jersey.

Follow BBC Guernsey on X and Facebook. Follow BBC Jersey on X and Facebook. Send your story ideas to [email protected].