Just one unit of social housing built this year
ONLY one new unit of social housing has been built so far this year – but that is one more than in the whole of last year.
The property, which was recently completed at Sir John Leale Avenue, was the first net addition to the island’s social housing stock since 16 units were built during 2022.
The latest figures underline the slow pace of the States’ housebuilding programme, 18 months after deputies agreed that nearly 750 new units of social housing were needed by 2027. Employment & Social Security, which is responsible for social housing, said it was deeply frustrated with a problem which had been years in the making.
President Peter Roffey said that the core problem had been ‘the dearth of sites available’ to progress social housing.
‘Certainly neither the political will nor the funding was lacking. In terms of political focus, this priority has trumped all others,' he said.
Deputy Roffey also said that the current Island Development Plan, adopted in 2016, provided fewer opportunities for new social housing and that one of the plan’s potential advantages, GP11, had been undermined by politicians repeatedly prophesying a recent decision which effectively scrapped the policy.
The previous Policy & Resources Committee also knocked back requests by ESS to develop social housing on various States-owned sites, which were later sold.
An average of about 250 new social housing units will need to be built annually for the next three years, in addition to more key worker housing, if the States is to meet the island’s minimum housing needs identified last year after an extensive study. But only 72 such units have been built since the start of 2020, made up of 34 social rental properties, 36 partial ownership homes and two providing specialist accommodation.
Building has started on 14 units of specialised housing at La Vielle Plage and on 15 units at the Oberlands earmarked to house key workers. Deputy Roffey hoped that they would be completed or be well under way by next summer.
‘While we freely admit that just over 100 units of affordable housing is a far more modest number than we would like to have seen built this term, it does contrast with the narrative advanced by some that nothing at all has happened in this respect during our term of office.’
Planning permission has been granted for 57 more social housing units and the planning process has started on a further 32 units. ESS is hopeful that building work could start on all of them before the end of the States term.
But Deputy Roffey was pessimistic about the chances of building the number of social housing units that the island requires by 2027.
‘That said, we and no doubt our successors will strain every sinew to get as close to that target as possible,’ he said.
‘We would very much liked to have progressed more units of affordable housing during this political term, but the build programme has encountered a perfect storm.
‘Many of those private developments which would have yielded up a percentage of affordable housing have been rendered far less viable, or even unviable, by the rising costs of material and project funding.
‘One thing we can say with certainty is that the next ESS will not be left with the same impossible lack of new sites as we were at the start of this term. But there remains a requirement to secure a lot more land for affordable housing to get close to meeting the identified needs.’
The Guernsey Housing Association has agreed that it will not be able to build all the new social housing required over the next few years.
It has built 1,000 properties in 20 years, and chief executive Vic Slade said that expecting similar numbers to be built in a shorter time-frame was ‘unrealistic’.
She said that the GHA would work with the States to meet housing needs but its focus had to be on the ‘quality and longevity of tenants’ homes’.
