Guernsey has most unaffordable housing within western Europe

The average home cost more than 16 times the average person’s earnings last year.

Since 2009, house prices have nearly doubled, but average earnings have increased by less than a third.

Improving affordability is a top priority in a new housing action plan published today by the Environment & Infrastructure Committee.

‘This growing divergence between prices and income is simply unsustainable,’ it said.

‘The median price to income ratio for property purchase in Guernsey is 16.3. This compares unfavourably to Jersey, the Isle of Man and England... and is the joint top value in western Europe.’

Independent experts Arc4 Ltd., which is advising E&I, said that affordability was only one of a catalogue of problems causing the housing market to fail and warned they would take years to put right.

But E&I president Lindsay de Sausmarez insisted the island’s housing problems could be overcome.

‘I know how hard it can be to find an affordable and decent place to live for many people,’ she said.

‘The challenges facing our housing market, which the report says is in a state of "systemic market failure", are deep-rooted and complicated, so we are not naive about the work ahead.

‘The Guernsey Housing Plan brings together all the different measures that we need to pursue to tackle these problems.

‘The plan paints a realistic picture of the scale of the challenges we face, but if we can deliver these actions this is not insurmountable.

‘It requires States committees, private developers and landlords to pull together to bring about positive change.’

Arc4 said that new housing was not being built quickly enough to meet demand and that too many sites with permission for housing remained undeveloped.

It also found that there were too few social housing units and serious problems with the private rental market.

It said average monthly rents in the private sector now exceeded £1,800 – almost twice what it considered to be sustainable – and that rental properties were unregulated and of variable quality.

Other problems identified included the energy efficiency of properties, barriers to homeowners moving into more suitable accommodation as they age and lack of data to support decision makers when trying to respond to housing problems.

E&I said its new housing action plan set out ‘wide-ranging and extensive actions that need to be taken to tackle these challenges head on’.

The action plan is designed to provide everyone in Guernsey with a range of good-quality housing which is affordable, secure, energy efficient and adequate for their needs.