A new housing committee ‘will cost £500,000 more a year’

Politicians behind a requete to set up a Committee for Housing from the start of the next States term on 1 July 2025 have claimed their proposal would put up costs by £310,000 annually.

But questions asked by the Guernsey Press have revealed figures worked out by States officials which indicate that the additional costs of a new committee would be at least £195,000 a year more than those estimated in the requete.

Environment & Infrastructure president Lindsay de Sausmarez, whose committee is currently responsible for housing policy, believed the higher sum was more reliable than the figures in

the requete.

‘The requete’s proposals would require the States to find more than £500,000 every single year just to restructure to create a new committee,’ she said.

‘Not a penny of that would increase the States’ capacity to deliver on the island’s housing priorities. It would just be to grow the size of government.’

The requete, led by Deputy Sasha Kazantseva-Miller, is critical of the recent rate of housebuilding, which has fallen well short of what the island requires according to the States’ own calculations. It argues that a new committee dedicated to housing would give the next States ‘a fighting chance of success’.

The requete, signed by seven States members, is on the agenda for this week’s States meeting.

It faces a sursis from the Policy & Resources committee which would defer the debate until the end of the year.

It also faces an amendment from E&I which lists work to be carried out over the next few months as part of its Guernsey Housing Plan and asks the States to decide what level of staff resources it wants to commit to housing matters in 2025, up to an additional £430,000.

Deputy Kazantseva-Miller criticised E&I’s amendment as ‘an act of desperation’.

Deputy Peter Ferbrache, another requerant, described it as ‘out of touch with reality’.

But E&I was left frustrated by criticism of its amendment as an opportunistic bid for additional cash for more staff.

Deputy de Sausmarez said the amendment was put forward as a more effective way to fund additional work on housing as a response to proposals in the requete to increase spending.

‘Our amendment is simply saying that if the States is minded to cough up that kind of cash, we recommend targeting the money not on restructuring but on frontline resources that will actually make a positive difference to output,’ she said.

‘If the States decides that it is happy with the rate of work that can be delivered by the three officials currently working full time on housing policy, we will continue delivering to that timeline.

‘Either way, we will produce quite a lot of work between now and the general election.’

Deputy de Sausmarez claimed that conversations prompted by the requete had indicated an appetite among States members to accelerate delivery of the Guernsey Housing Plan and that E&I’s amendment alone provided a way of doing that.

‘If deputies are serious about increasing the rate of work on housing, and if they are happy to allocate more money to housing as the States’ top domestic priority, then they can support our amendment, which unlike the requete would result in more work being done more quickly.’

The Assembly is widely expected to support P&R’s sursis later this week.