Queripel - ‘there should have been stricter rules with GP11’

That is the view of Deputy Lester Queripel, who has put formal questions to the Development & Planning Authority about the provision of affordable homes.

The subject has been hotly debated in recent months, with developers and members of the Guernsey Party claiming that a policy which was introduced to encourage more to be built – known as GP11 – has actually ended up discouraging development, while advocates of the policy believe it is essential to ensure islanders can afford to buy their first home.

The policy requires any plot of 20 homes or more to include an allocation of social housing or partial ownership housing.

Details of progress made on the Island Development Plan have been published in an Annual Monitoring Report covering both 2019 and 2020.

In answer to Deputy Queripel’s series of questions, the DPA said various sites had been developed by the Guernsey Housing Association which had resulted in 149 units being provided between 2017 and 2020. However, none of these units were provided through the mechanism of Policy GP11, although ‘there are now a number of sites that are coming forward’.

Deputy Queripel also wanted to know what the effect would have been if his suggestion had won States members’ approval, rather than Deputy Peter Roffey’s.

The original policy required affordable housing on sites of five or more units.

Deputy Queripel argued for that number to be 10, but Deputy Roffey’s argument for 20 won the day.

In its response, the DPA explained that according to the plans submitted, his policy would have generated 13 affordable home units but it added caveats, as ‘other factors may have influenced the outcome’.

‘It does not follow that these developments would have been progressed if GP11 had been applied to them, so the question is impossible to answer with any degree of certainty,’ it said.

‘I was pleased to learn that approximately 13 units of affordable housing would have been built if the amendment I laid had been voted on and succeeded, as I’ve always wondered about that,’ Deputy Queripel said after receiving the DPA’s answers.

‘Thirteen affordable homes would have been provided for 13 families, which would have been a real “game changer” for them. If that doesn’t add credence to my view that the threshold of 20 needs to be reduced, then I don’t know what does, to be honest.’

In response to Deputy Queripel’s remaining questions, the DPA confirmed that the car park between St Martin’s Primary School and La Grande Rue, adjacent to a proposed development of 26 homes at Briarwood, is owned by the States and that the proposed plans would have to be approved by the States as well as by planners.

The DPA has since confirmed that ‘approved by the States’ in this case means approved by Property Services, as opposed to approved by States members.