Housing committee’s priority to deliver hundreds of new homes
A new States committee dedicated to housing would work up a plan to deliver the hundreds of new houses needed under the States Strategic Housing Indicator as a first priority.
The Assembly will debate a requete from Deputy Sasha Kazantseva-Miller, supported by six colleagues, at the beginning of September. She wants the committee to take on the housing responsibilities currently falling under the mandates of Environment & Infrastructure, the Committee for Employment & Social Security and the Policy & Resources Committee and develop a service level agreement with the Development & Planning Authority over land use.
And a priority would be to develop a more detailed plan to build more than 1,500 units of accommodation between 2023 and 2027, where the island has already fallen well behind delivery. ‘The delivery against the SSHI is not something that is explicitly addressed by the Guernsey Housing Plan but is deemed important to ensure there is a clear pathway, accountability and monitoring to achieve the required levels of homebuilding,’ Deputy Kazantseva-Miller said in the requete.
‘The establishment of a new principal committee to be responsible for housing will provide an enhanced level of political ownership and accountability and be the central point and voice for issues on housing for industry, government and community,’ she added.
She said that the new committee, which, if approved, would come into effect after the 2025 election, would have a ‘stronger and larger mandate that the fragmented status quo’ and ‘create one central voice and accountable body for all matters relating to delivery of housing’.
Staffing responsibilities within the current set up would pass to the new committee and it also wants to employ a committee secretary and two policy officers, which, including other costs, would take the committee’s extra budget required to £310,000 a year.
The requete has been signed by Deputies Kazantseva-Miller, Peter Ferbrache, Marc Leadbeater, Dave Mahoney, Nick Moakes, Carl Meerveld and Victoria Oliver.
