Selling States houses to the GHA to be explored
PLANS are being explored to sell the entire States housing stock to the Guernsey Housing Association.
Tenants of some 1,600 households are going to be contacted directly by the States so that they are kept informed as to how the potential change is progressing.
Two committees, Policy & Resources and Employment & Social Security, have agreed that a stock transfer is worthy of proper analysis. If the issue is to be pursued, the States would have to agree.
Deputy Peter Roffey, the president of ESS, stressed that the idea was at a very early phase.
‘The only decision made so far is that both our committee and the Policy & Resources Committee are supportive of this being explored.
‘There is a huge amount of work to do, for example coming to an agreed valuation for States-owned housing stock over the next six months or more, before our two committees could determine whether the transfer to the Guernsey Housing Association is something we would support recommending to the States or not.
‘I want to reassure our tenants that no final decision has been made, this is a scoping exercise only at this stage and we will contact them directly in due course as this work progresses.
‘In my view the final decision should principally be driven by what is in the best interests of social housing tenants, both current and future.’
Deputy John Gollop, a member of ESS, told the Guernsey Press Politics Podcast that the matter needed very careful evaluation.
‘We have far too small a proportion of social housing on the island, but ESS is too responsible to go for a money grab,' he said.
'I don’t think we’re going to see auctions of States properties Mrs Thatcher-style or Kensington Borough-style, it’s not going to be like that, it’ll be very thought through and clearly looked at.’
One of the benefits of a stock transfer is that the not-for-profit GHA is unfettered by States procedures and protocols and is considered to operate in a more dynamic way.
As an owner of major assets, it can access private finance without the need for States bureaucracy and further States deficit.
For instance, the partial or total demolition and rebuild of Les Genats Estate, which has been mooted, is understood to be more attainable under a housing association.
The GHA can also plough all the profits from rents into the supply of new social housing, whereas the rents from States Housing get dissipated within the general revenue account.
On the negative side, the rental income from States Housing is more than £20m. a year and is therefore very important to the taxpayer.
The idea of a stock transfer was first raised by P&R president Deputy Peter Ferbrache earlier this year, when he told a Chamber of Commerce lunch that the entire social housing stock should be passed over ‘lock, stock and barrel’ to the GHA.
At that time he was speaking in a personal capacity and not as president of Policy & Resources, however among his political colleagues he now seems to be gaining support for a fundamental change.
