Bureaucracy blues, green field nightmares

I FEEL an urge this month to come out and confess to a dirty secret I’ve been harbouring for some time now. I get the feeling I’m not the only one. Yet it feels so wrong. But I can’t bear the untruths any longer. It’s so liberating to say it out loud. Yes, it’s true. I agree with Gavin St Pier. Not all the time, obviously. But specifically his comments that there is a ‘broken culture’ at the States.

Readers will recall that Deputy St Pier made these comments earlier this year, when he said that the PEH cost ‘cover-up’ was a sign of a ‘broken culture’ at the States. It’s shocking that the States summer recess of 2024 is upon us with still no publication of the report on this sorry affair. Plus ca change. Looking sheepish and hoping things will just be forgotten wasn’t a strategy that worked for me when I got into trouble as a kid, but I was obviously missing a trick.

If this all wasn’t so serious, it would be laughable. Public sector failure, for that is what we’re discussing, adversely impacts people’s lives. Not always in an immediately, extremely painful way, as seems to be the case with the very unfortunate situation at Fort Richmond. Or in such an immediately obvious way as with this week’s planning debacle over Longue Hougue. This backdrop of continued public sector failure is adversely impacting this island, and each of us individually, on an ongoing level, be it as an economic cost, social cost, or environmental cost. Longue Hougue is pure comedy, wonderful ironic material. At the moment, it feels like each day brings a new car crash.

Spoiler alert. This month, I’m eschewing my witty, cynical self to focus on making a serious point about the proposed green field developments under the IDP. Bear with me, I’ll get there.

I’m not the first and I won’t be the last to say it, but this States just isn’t in the business of getting things done. It’s easy to blame the political body. It has its faults but the administrative machine has fallen down a bureaucratic rabbit hole with all minds focused on refining the Newspeakian Government Work Plan. The result is an absence of strategy around any issue of significance.

Let’s take the current question du jour – housing. We’ve had it patiently explained to us in these pages, like we were seven-year-olds, that housing is a difficult problem. Let’s take that as a given and have a look at what the States has been up to in this area in recent years.

A few minutes scanning the States website is quite informative and illustrates the general point that government business is entangled in a morass of bureaucracy.

Search housing strategy and you come across this little gem – ‘Housing Strategy Priority Policy Area’ is a page under the ‘Future Guernsey Plan’ tab. It boldly claims that ‘the Housing Strategy Priority Policy Area aims to review and set future direction in a number of housing-related areas and “problem areas”’. It explains that the Housing Strategic Priority Policy Area comprises 11 projects, which ‘together will feed into creating an updated Housing Strategy for Guernsey’. This Housing Strategy, it explains, will be ‘an agreed vision for the direction of housing-related policymaking for the next 10 years’.

Is this the correct focus? They’ve got to have gotten that a bit mixed up. After all, are those looking for a roof over their head really bothered about a ‘vision for policymaking’? I wonder.

Eleven projects sound like a lot, but the webpage helpfully explains that seven of these have been grouped into a two-year Housing Strategy Programme and that this Housing Strategy Programme was established following the States’ endorsement of Environment & Infrastructure’s 2018 Policy Letter ‘Local housing review and development of a future housing strategy’, published on the back of an (assumedly expensive) report from KPMG.

Then, without skipping a beat, the next paragraph abruptly explains that ‘It has been agreed to suspend the Housing Strategy Programme until further notice. The urgent and immediate need to address the current housing market has been recognised, as was the need to provide quick and innovative solutions to overcome the lack of accessible and suitable housing for key workers and business generally. As such, it has been agreed to form the Housing Action Group’.

There’s no dating of this announcement. By my math, according to the claimed timetable, the Housing Strategy Programme would have completed its seven projects by 2020, 2021 latest, but given the Housing Action Group was formed in 2021, I think it’s safe to assume that those seven projects went uncompleted.

But bureaucracy does not sit on its laurels. In 2023, we were treated to another Housing Plan. This time published on the back of not one but two reports, this time from UK specialist Arc4 Ltd (again presumably not cheap). This time around, there are six priority action areas comprising 30 action points (I counted).

The verbs belie its bureaucratic DNA – ‘investigate... explore options... consider opportunities... review...’ I found it impossible to surmise what the core strategy was, let alone what it was in 10 words (which was a litmus test I was taught). And it was first published less than a year ago, so it’s safe to assume none of these action areas are yet realised.

And now, as die-hard States watchers will be aware, there is a requete to move the deckchairs – apologies, establish a new standalone housing committee – lodged for debate sometime after the summer. I’m being unfair – it’s probably not a bad idea. But would a Housing Committee cut through this bureaucracy? I don’t know.

In any event, it could well be that talk of forming a new Housing Committee as a response to this lack of action is premature. Earlier this year, drum roll please, Housing Action Group II was announced in January by the then-new President of Policy & Resources. Deputy Trott even graciously offered to chair it himself, according to reports, claiming just a few months later that up to 700 homes would be built in the next three years, just 100 less than in the previous six years. If only just wishing it were so was a viable policy solution to all our problems!

So that’s the chronology of (in)action of the last six years. The problems are complex, granted. But six years, three consultants’ reports, two policy letters and two action groups later, no clear strategy is yet in sight.

It’s a failure, obviously, but it’s not a failure that justifies building social housing on six greenfield sites as proposed by the Development & Planning Authority in its review of the Island Development Plan.

A point I made at the St Martin’s constables session last week is that there is more than enough development land in the current footprint of the IDP to provide for both private and social housing targets for the next five years – even the stretch targets the DPA has imposed on itself. A point confirmed by the DPA president.

That is, there’s enough development land in the current IDP for 2,000 units. That’s more than the (stretch) target of 971 private homes in the next five years and a (stretch) target of 901 social homes in the next five years combined. And be aware these targets are only achievable with a rate of housebuilding that’s more than double that of the last six years.

In short, there is a 15-year supply of development land for private housing at current building rates. An excess that does not justify the approach taken by the DPA in proposing to build social housing on six greenfield sites. All the DPA needs to do is rezone private housing development land as social housing development land within the current IDP.

Building on greenfield sites is not something to be done just because it’s more convenient. The whole rationale for having clearly defined boundaries for development in the first place is to protect our green space. Relaxation of the boundaries at the first sign of tension is craven and inexcusable.

It was a bit ironic, having been showcasing our ‘green credentials’ to the king last week.

If you’re as upset as I am about the proposed greenfield development, please do submit a response to the online consultation – difficult though it is to use the form on the website the States created for this.