Building key worker homes on PEH green field ‘the lazy option’
BUILDING key worker accommodation on a green field at the Princess Elizabeth Hospital would be ‘the lazy option’, the politician leading a move to prevent it said yesterday.
Opening debate on his requete, Deputy Steve Falla questioned the origins of the proposal to build there, claiming that if the intention had not been ‘leaked’, States members would not have been aware until a planning application went in.
He said he was laying the requete not because he knew better, but because the plan to build on the field beside Duchess of Kent House was a ‘big, unnecessary departure from planning policy’.
Key worker accommodation close to the hospital would be better provided on those parts of the site that have already been developed, he argued, rather than on land within a designated agricultural priority area.
‘The ability to bust established policy should not be allowed to be left in the hands of a few deputies alone,’ he said.
‘This Assembly is the policymaker and the guardian of policy.’
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He criticised the way the proposal to build on the site was developed, saying the brief given to the States Property Unit was ‘so narrowly-defined, it beggars belief’.
‘It appears that the brief was to provide 150 units of one- or two-bedroomed accommodation within 500 metres of the PEH and to be built soon.’
He pointed out that this brief was not discussed or approved by the full HSC committee, and had not been widely circulated among States members.
‘We don’t know who drew it up and whether it followed best practice,’ he said.
‘Was it more of a chat in the corridor? It certainly wasn’t a carefully considered committee decision.’
The requete, debate on which continues today, calls for a ban on any development of priority agricultural land for staff accommodation unless there is no alternative and, even then, not without the express approval of the States Assembly.
‘If we build on this field, what does that mean for agricultural priority areas in 2022 and if we go ahead with this development, what will it mean in 2023, 2024 and beyond?’ Deputy Falla said.
Fellow signatory Deputy Peter Roffey, president of Employment & Social Security, of which Deputy Falla is vice-president, drew attention to the less controversial elements of the requete. Its first two propositions affirm a commitment to providing more key worker accommodation and making sure that such housing is more varied, ensuring staff with families can be suitably housed.
He dismissed objections to the requete that relied on the idea that key worker accommodation was badly needed, arguing that the effect of the requete would not be to diminish its provision, but simply to build it alongside the field rather than on it.
