‘I’m generally never happy about progress because I always want things to be faster,’ said Steve Williams.
‘But we have the challenges of where we were and the inevitable checks and balances that have to be gone through.’
His committee has today published its work plan for the remainder of the political term to 2029, the second committee to do so.
Deputy Williams said the committee had started out by reprioritising the 28 priorities set out under the Environment & Infrastructure Committee’s housing plan, mainly to focus on the delivery of more homes.
Housing is now looking to supplement what the Guernsey Housing Association is doing, with the intention of building the first States houses in a quarter of a century.
But this was not something that could be done quickly, he said.
‘There are sites now coming through the island development partial review process, that have not actually come through the States vote yet, and won’t till the autumn, but that is a multitude of smaller sites that are more readily available to develop rather than waiting for the big raid of our Leale’s Yard scenario,’ said Deputy Williams.
Among the main priorities is to have some 300 affordable homes completed or under construction before the end of this States’ term.
Deputy Williams accepts that this would be a challenge.
‘There’s no magic wand on this. Homes take so long to build, and you see that example all around the island,’ he said. ‘But we need to be starting somewhere. We need to be pressing on, and what we’ll do is create a programme that will carry on into the next term.’
Part of this longer-term policy can be seen in the outline Housing Delivery Plan, published with the work plan, which takes the figure set out a few years’ ago in the States strategic housing indicator of 1,565 additional homes between 2023 and 2027, and increases this to a total of just more than 2,000.
This would comprise 1,062 private market homes and 976 affordable.
But Deputy Williams said he was realistic about this as a goal.
‘Those are big numbers,’ he said. ‘They’re meant to be indicators, but obviously we all end up looking at them as targets.
‘Our hope is just to achieve something significant over the next few years that actually makes an impact on the housing market.’
He said the committee did not want to ‘scare’ the housing market with big numbers, but properties were going to come onto the market gradually and in phases.
‘It’s not like we’re dumping lots of new homes in the market, and there’s a lot of work to be done before we even get to that point.’
The committee would do the best that it could, he said.
‘Obviously, if you aim high you might get close to it, rather than aiming low and giving ourselves an easy target.’
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