‘I have taken personal interest in affordable housing to buy’

‘A LOT OF fun and the people are nice’ was John Dyke’s first reaction on being asked about his new job.

The former corporate lawyer had served on the old Public Accounts Committee, so that gave him a good grounding in how government works, but he was happy to discover how friendly everyone was.

‘One thing that has been a pleasant surprise is that everyone is very nice to deal with and it’s possibly more fun than I thought it would be, so I’m quite enjoying myself.

‘The conversations I have with people are nice, people have a sense of humour and it’s generally a fairly pleasant experience.’

But has he dipped his toe into social media yet?

He responded with his typical candidness.

‘I don’t really do social media, but I’m told that perhaps I should, but the thing is there are only so many hours in the day and I’ve got a ton of things to do.

‘And going through social media, they do tend to have quite a harsh tone, if I start reading that stuff then I’ll start getting cross and one doesn’t want to end up like Donald Trump! So I don’t do it.’

Deputy Dyke is a member of Scrutiny Management, and the Development & Planning Authority.

He describes himself as a ‘small government libertarian’ and his priorities include efficient spending and keeping taxes down, getting education right, and providing affordable housing so that young people can aspire to own a home.

‘Now that I’m on Development & Planning, I’ve taken a personal interest in affordable housing, that’s affordable housing to buy as opposed to social housing.

‘We need to work on the planning arrangements to push forward the building of affordable housing to buy.

‘At the moment the definition of affordable housing is actually a definition of social housing, so we’re not really helping youngsters who want to own a home, it’s really difficult for them, so there’s a lot of things that we have to work on that have to be tied together.

A member of the Guernsey Party, he described how the nascent party took shape, starting with just a few people meeting up because they were frustrated with the States’ high expenditure.

But where did these meetings of early rumblings take place?

‘We used to have our meetings at the Pickled Pig, that was Guernsey Party headquarters.

‘Various combinations of us all go there now, with other deputies as well.

‘But it was the Pickled Pig, we’ll have to put a plaque up.’

In the online States debates, Deputy Dyke has upped the stakes in the Microsoft Teams interesting backgrounds.

His gothic window and bookcase of all England law reports easily beats Deputy Peter Ferbrache’s wooden beams and Deputy David De Lisle’s exposed granite.

Dog lovers will have spotted that Deputy Dyke was the only candidate to include his dog in his candidate profile photo.

Sadly Rosie, a springer spaniel, passed away a week before this interview, and her owner paid tribute to her appeal.

‘Everyone says that she won the election, she was very beloved.

‘In the election campaign we set up a little party pop-up shop in the Arcade, and one family was dragged in by their little daughter because she wanted to see the dog.’

With his voice suddenly sounding a bit croaky, Deputy Dyke insisted that he was getting over the loss, and then added ‘if you ever do’.