The committee, created last summer to get a handle on the island’s housing crisis, repeatedly refused to say how many new homes it wanted to see built over the next few years when it appeared at its first Scrutiny public hearing yesterday.
Housing president Steve Williams said he and his members were ‘working bloody hard’ and ‘making a lot of progress’ on increasing the supply of new homes and making housing costs more affordable.
‘Principally, we want to reduce social housing waiting lists to a very low level, not have housing issues on the front page of the Guernsey Press all the time, and get affordability far better in terms of renting and prices,’ said Deputy Williams.
‘We haven’t set down a specific target number. We are working things up, progressing on a number of fronts and pushing as hard as we can.
‘We will come back to you with some concrete numbers in the delivery plan later this year.’
Housebuilding has reached its highest rate since the Covid pandemic, but the island will be well short of the additional nearly 1,600 homes the previous States agreed were needed by 2027.
Scrutiny president Andy Sloan pressed several times for Housing to set a revised target. At one stage, Deputy Sloan suggested that the number of homes would need to increase by 15-20% for the committee to achieve any meaningful improvement in affordability.
Housing vice-president Deputy Sasha Kazantseva-Miller, who led the requete which created the new committee last year, said it was ‘not ready to come up with numbers out of the air’ and was instead working on specific sites where developments could be accelerated.
She told the hearing that the committee was considering replacing the existing housing needs indicator, which led to the 1,600 figure last term, with a firm target against which the States could be held to account.
Senior civil servant Claire Barrett, who supported Housing members at the hearing, said that success would ultimately be providing the number of additional homes set out by the States in the needs indicator.
‘We know there is enough land to meet that indicator and we know there is a pipeline of planning permissions every two years that is currently meeting that indicator,’ she said.
‘The committee is concentrating on turning those planning permissions into completions to meet the number which the States has indicated is required.’
Deputy Williams believed that site clearance at Leale’s Yard would start in September, but it would be years before homes there were completed and occupied.
He revealed that a new document would be published next week listing hundreds of sites with permission for housing and the reasons they were not being developed. He hoped some of them could be developed by the States and private developers working in partnership more.
‘I know we shouldn’t get the violins out here, but there is a squeeze at the moment on profitability for developers, because the cost of building is very high. A number are thinking that they can get steady work with the States,’ he said.
Housing is also working with other committees to encourage the development of brownfield sites, such as disused former vineries, potentially by allowing contaminated soil to be reused in infrastructure projects rather than tipped at significant cost.
And Deputy Williams called for a change of thinking to allow housing to be developed on the Castel Hospital site.
‘We have been talking with officials about needing a phased development of the Castel Hospital site,’ he said.
‘If there are about 300 staff working there, largely for Health & Social Care, we can’t wait for the last one to leave. We need to carve up the site and have a phased development.
‘We’ve got a housing problem, it’s in a good location and I’m keen to press on as swiftly as we can.’