States defers debate on housing committee for three months

Deputies overwhelmingly backed a sursis, led by the Policy & Resources Committee, which pushed back the debate until mid-December.

Signatories and critics of a requete to create a new committee have clashed over the annual costs involved, with estimates ranging from £310,000 to £500,000.

P&R president Lyndon Trott told the States Assembly yesterday that the debate should await more information about the States’ financial position in the 2025 budget, which will be debated in November.

‘P&R is eager to ensure that the States is as informed on fiscal matters as it can be to consider the establishment of a committee for housing and that can only be addressed having first considered the 2025 budget,’ said Deputy Trott.

His sursis was backed by the group of deputies proposing a new committee, who were led by Sasha Kazantseva-Miller.

She said the outcome of the 2025 budget debate could alter some of the requerants’ ideas about housing but would not affect the creation of the new housing committee, which they propose from 1 July next year.

In the six-year period before 2016, when a separate housing committee last existed, an average of 155 new homes were built annually.

In the six-year period after 2016, with Environment & Infrastructure leading on housing policies and Employment & Social Security on social housing, an average of 120 new homes were built annually.

‘The key issue which propelled me to seek to establish a committee for housing is the chronic under-supply of homes which we have had for decades,’ said Deputy Kazantseva-Miller.

‘That has led to lack of affordability and the house price to earnings ratio is as bad today as it was 10 to 15 years ago.

‘You could see this potentially as a systemic failure for decades – that we have been asleep at the wheel and come to accept that such unsustainable house prices were somehow the norm.’

Supporters of the requete believe a new committee would help focus the States’ attention on housing and stimulate housebuilding.

Critics of the requete believe that setting up a new committee would be a waste of any additional money the States would be prepared to spend on housing.