Lack of scrutiny only adds to housing policy failure

HOW many years of a major States policy failing does it take to spark action?

One or two may be a blip, perhaps – three at a real push, but you really would expect people to be getting interested, but then after that you are getting into a whole States term.

House building targets failed to be hit in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013 – the 300-a-year target was breached only in 2014, when 320 new units were built, because of two new extra-care housing schemes being finished.

That means, according to the States policy that has been endorsed a few times, there should be more than 1,300 extra units of accommodation available for people to live in.

Focus has only in the last year really begun to be switched on to the issue, which should now become one of the major ones in the forthcoming election.

There is no doubt that there has been a positive story to tell – although still questions to ask – when it comes to social housing and the role of the Guernsey Housing Association in ensuring enough units are being built to help those in the most need.

But that appears to have made those in power blind to the bigger picture of the private housing market.

It was only at the end of last year, having been forced to investigate the issue, that Housing and Treasury laid it bare.

'If the housing market was functioning effectively, the household income/property price ratio should be relatively stable; prices, like salaries, would be rising in line with inflation; and the number of property transactions would be similar year to year,' they said, before adding, 'none of this is happening'.

'Inflation is going down yet property prices are increasing, with the average property now costing 15 times the average salary. As a result, fewer houses are being sold. The market should have corrected itself, with lower prices encouraging greater transactions; but at time of writing this has yet to happen.'

Remember that in 1999 the average local market property price to average salary ratio was 7.2 to 1 and you can see how unaffordable things have become for those looking to get on the housing ladder.

Treasury and Housing's answer was to carry on waiting for the market to correct itself, believing that any financial intervention would just stoke house price inflation and that was a no-no. Instead deputies ordered them to carry out a broad-based review of how the housing market was operating. Which is some small comfort, at least, to all those young workers the States is so reliant on for its population policy to succeed and the island to keep on ticking over.

But given past examples of when deputies have ordered a department to investigate something it doesn't want to – take tax relief on let properties as the latest example – there is a danger that the report is written to look like it is meeting a preconceived stance, which needs to be avoided.

There are questions to be asked about the housing target itself, true, and that will now be investigated – again because the majority of the Assembly wanted that to happen, not because the key players wanted to act.

There are also questions being raised about the impact of the social housing agenda on the health of the private market – and whether, indeed, the partial ownership scheme acts as a springboard into the private market as is claimed or more of a hard landing from where few move on.

Housing and the GHA would say that they are aiding only those who would not be able to afford first-time buyer prices in the private sector so it does not impact on the health of the market. Other professionals are vocally now disagreeing with that stance.

What is needed, and what has been sorely lacking, is proper scrutiny of the issue by a body independent of Treasury and Housing.

The Housing minister took to Twitter last week to defend his department's record and say that the scrutiny committee could have looked at it all if they had felt it necessary.

And that lack of an investigation has been a major oversight, especially in this last term, because this was a failed States policy with major consequences which are being acutely felt.

To counter that, though, would be the age-old argument about the lack of resources within the scrutiny committees.

Last year, PAC and Scrutiny both had annual budgets of £280,000 – less than it took to rearrange the Town seafront and put it back together again.

Which is another argument for the States to back a strengthened scrutiny body in the new House, one that feels it is able to take on major policy failures and force the answers it needs.

The prevailing mood of those in charge of housing policy is that it will be solved by increasing supply and that social housing is the way to do it.

They can do nothing to make private developers build, they argue.

They will also say that every scrap of land the States has made available has been built on – or will be.

Some of this winds all the way back to the States failing early this term to properly engage in reorganising its property portfolio to free up land.

But it is too narrow a viewpoint to look only at partial ownership for first-time buyers, which arguably does very little to stimulate the rest of the housing market.

The States could, if it wanted, itself develop homes for the private market, for example.

It will go down as a major oversight of this Assembly to not have already had the debate and cleared the issue up.

That is not just a failure of policy making, it is a failure of scrutiny too.