GP11 suspension backed by two committee heads
The presidents of two key States committees have backed the suspension of GP11 – but for two years only.
Lindsay de Sausmarez and Victoria Oliver submitted an amendment yesterday for a shorter suspension than the five-year period proposed in an amendment circulated by Lyndon Trott two weeks ago. The amendments will be debated at next week’s States meeting, alongside a requete led by Deputy John Dyke, which he hopes will result in the States scrapping GP11 altogether.
GP11 requires larger new housing developments to include affordable housing. Some property developers believe it has discouraged construction and contributed to the island’s housing affordability crisis, but politicians leading on social housing have warned that their efforts to ramp up building would be further behind schedule had GP11 not been in place since 2016.
The presidents of the Environment & Infrastructure and Development & Planning Authority said their plan to set aside GP11 for two years had several advantages over the alternative five-year suspension.
‘The relative benefits are that it provides a stronger incentive to bring housing development plans forward without delay, greater certainty for developers in the form of a guaranteed minimum period, and a likely reduction in the States’ funding requirement for affordable housing,’ they said.
In April last year, the States agreed that the island needed about 1,600 new homes by 2027 to meet known demand.
Since then, net inward migration has grown at a faster rate than anticipated, and Guernsey has been found to have the least-affordable housing in western Europe.
The States have emphasised the need to increase the supply of new housing, but at the end of last year there were fewer than 100 additional units than 12 months earlier.
Deputies de Sausmarez and Oliver said that action was needed now.
‘The people in our community struggling to find a suitable home to rent or buy need new homes to be built as soon as possible, so policy decisions should be geared towards accelerating its delivery.
‘A two-year [suspension] will act as a greater incentive than a five-year period to bring forward planning applications for larger housing developments sooner, meeting that objective more effectively and alleviating the negative impacts on our community more quickly.’
They accepted that suspending GP11 for any period could mean an ‘unquantifiable’ increase in housebuilding costs for the States, but argued that the impact on taxpayers was likely to be even greater under Deputy Trott’s proposed five-year suspension.
They also said that a two-year suspension would fit better with the DPA’s ongoing review of the Island Development Plan, which is scheduled to produce recommendations in the first half of 2025.
