Extra-care 'train crash' should have been stopped in its tracks

LAST week's States debate on extra-care sheltered housing was a total horlicks which did nothing for the Assembly's reputation.

Given the States' current obsession with 'good governance', it's ironic they chose to play out such a shambolic farce on the floor of the chamber.

Having recently suggested that criticism of our politicians had reached unfair levels, I may have to re-think.

The real problem was that the report on the future of Housing's two residential homes was presented as a perfect example of cross-department policy-making when quite the opposite was true and the departments involved were at loggerheads behind the scenes.

The disagreement wasn't over the concept of extra-care sheltered housing but over how it could be funded in the long term. Most members of HSSD and Social Security wanted that resolved before work commenced on a capital project costing more than £20m. Even as an avid supporter of sheltered housing, I have to confess that seemed eminently reasonable.

The question is why, given their concerns, did HSSD sign up as co-sponsors of the report?

We'll probably never know the truth of what happened behind the scenes to bring about this fiasco. Those HSSD members who supported the sursis suggested they hadn't been involved in drawing up the report and were only shown the completed document at the 11th hour. If that's true, then either the Housing Department or HSSD's own staff were at fault for keeping them in the dark.

Some HSSD members also claim that at the end of the process they faced a fait accompli from the Housing minister. Either sign up now to a final report you've never seen before or Housing will go it alone and 'wipe the floor with you in the States'. If that's true, it was unfortunate and quite the opposite of the shining example of corporate working we'd been told about.

But the fact remains that the members of HSSD are all adults and should have been strong enough to stand up to that type of bullying and say: 'no - we're happy to support you but only when our funding concerns have been allayed.'

So, leaving aside the minister who supported the report throughout, what is my assessment of the HSSD members' behaviour?

Well there's obviously a big black mark for allowing themselves to be railroaded into signing something they were unhappy about. The rest of the States have a right to expect that a signature on a report actually means something. But a grudging respect for their willingness to take the inevitable heavy flak resulting from finally raising their concerns and trying to force a resolution. By far the easier path would have been to keep their heads down and just go along with Housing.

What about the Housing members? Well they played a game of chicken for high stakes and won but at what costs to future working relationships? When it was clear that support from the co-sponsoring department was ebbing away, they could have regrouped, delayed the report and thrashed out an agreed way forward, particularly when it was clear that Social Security shared the concerns of HSSD. Instead they preferred a show-down on the floor of the States which they won but which further damaged our parliament's already tarnished reputation.

Finally what about the Policy Council? The third bullet point of their mandate is: 'The coordination of the work of the States'. So by any standards this episode has been a huge failure in the discharge of that mandate.

More particularly, I understand they discussed the looming disaster shortly before the States' meeting. It was already very clear that a 'reputational train crash' lay ahead on the tracks.

One suggestion was for Housing to pull the report for a while to allow the interdepartmental differences to be thrashed out properly.

That had to be the sensible way forward but only one minister out of 11 voted for it. That either shows a lack of judgement or a juvenile desire to experience the drama of a bare-knuckle fight on the floor of the States. If the latter was the case, then they got what they wanted and I hope they enjoyed it.

I wish the new extra-care sheltered housing schemes well. They are certainly needed. I only hope the States can afford to ensure fair access to them, and any future such schemes, on the same basis as residential care. I also hope that in future joint States reports don't produce such an embarrassing mess.