The former Economic Development president asked Policy & Resources for a list of all the land purchases in a series of Rule 14 questions.
The answers reveal that over the last States term, and the first couple of months of this one, the States has spent more than £18m. on 11 plots of land with the potential for 711 homes, plus £2m. on two pre-existing houses for keyworkers.
Deputy Inder said that although the information had been previously published and was in the public domain, this was the first time it had been collated into one place.
‘This Rule 14 question will be the first time anyone has seen the current position of the land purchased over five years, where it is with planning and what they’re looking at building,’ he said.
‘That document is actually really important. I think they should have done it years ago.
‘I think it’s quite telling. We’ve spent nigh on £20m. purchasing bits of land, and to my knowledge, last term, we did not start and then finish any house or any social housing or any government housing. Nothing was started at all.
‘If you start looking at the plot prices, they’re very different. If you start dividing land purchase price versus guesstimated plots, you can get some interesting results.
‘The whole strategy seems to be wrapped around the purchase of the land, rather than having strategies and then buying land after. It all seems a bit odd to me.’
He added that now that he had the information he would be posing questions to Housing president Steve Williams.
‘I believe he said that he was going to start hundreds of houses within the first year,’ said Deputy Inder.
‘But if you look at that response, it doesn’t look likely.
‘The only thing I can see coming out of the ground at the moment is the CI Tyres site, which was really last term and I’m not entirely clear when the money for that is coming.’
Deputy Inder said that, like most islanders, he wanted to see houses being built.
‘But my message to the Housing president is too manage expectations. Don’t say we’re going to start building hundreds within a year, when you clearly aren’t going to.’
Although he was generally happy with the response, Deputy Inder was disappointed that the sellers of each parcel of land had not been identified as requested.
Instead P&R said that while land transactions were in the public domain through records held at the Greffe, it omitted the details of the vendors on the basis that, at the time of sale, they would have had a legitimate expectation that this information would not be specifically published. The committee was concerned that such a precedent may discourage individuals from engaging in future dealings with the States.
‘So they’ve got the information, but they want me to go to the Greffe and get it which just seemed a bit of a weird response,’ he said.
‘This is one of the problems with government, what the civil service do, is generally, say “we’ve already told you that” – but if that’s buried in the fourth paragraph of a press release two and a half years ago, it is not unreasonable for an elected deputy to just ask to clarify the basic position?’
The response is available at https://parliament.gg/parliamentary-business/assets/questions/2025-21
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