Better sites available for key worker housing, insists P&R

The senior committee’s president, Lyndon Trott, insisted that it was scrapping the development of the field known as Le Bordage Seath only because there were better sites available.

‘The need for more housing as a whole is a top priority for this States, and that includes more key worker housing, which is important to the recruitment and retention of our health professionals, who are themselves essential to our island,’ said Deputy Trott.

‘But we need to develop the most appropriate sites and be realistic about what is deliverable.

‘As other sites are now progressing, it is more difficult to argue that the development of Le Bordage Seath is strategically important at this time and it’s clearly a site that faces a lot of public and political opposition.’

The Health & Social Care Committee previously argued that building in the green field was an essential part of its requirement for hundreds of additional units of accommodation for health service staff.

HSC was unavailable to comment yesterday, following the announcement that the planning application had been withdrawn.

‘I’ve given an undertaking that we will work with HSC to look at other options and identify what is practically possible,’ said Deputy Trott.

‘I would like to acknowledge the very good work carried out by the previous P&R on enabling developments at other key sites near the hospital, which are more appropriate brown field and main centre sites.

‘If they are granted planning permission, I hope to see work begin on each of those soon.’

Other sites identified for key worker housing since the application was made to develop Le Bordage Seath in December 2022 include Domaine des Moulins, the former CI Tyres site, at La Charroterie, Braye Lodge at Ruette Braye and a mixed tenure project at the Oberlands.

P&R said those sites could provide more than 100 new units in total.

‘We always said there were other and better sites for health key workers and I’m pleased to see some of those sites now being developed,’ said Deputy Steve Falla, who led an attempt to stop the development of Le Bordage Seath months before the application was submitted.

‘The application had not gone away in the minds of the community.

‘Only yesterday someone approached me about it. It was very much still on people’s minds.’

P&R vice-president Heidi Soulsby said that land currently used by the College of Further Education at the Coutanchez could also include some key worker housing once the new Guernsey Institute was built at Les Ozouets, a project which the States finally agreed to fund last week.