Of late is a proposal to build multi-storey apartments on the ample car park at Frossard House in La Charroterie, strategically timed to counter contentious draft plans to provide more healthcare-worker housing on a green-field site. This is likely to cause heated debate during June’s States Assembly meeting as the Committee for Health & Social Care and the Policy & Resources Committee have suggested building on a sloping field within the precinct of the Princess Elizabeth Hospital.
A growing number of deputies are opposed to using agricultural land, regardless of its farming quality, preferring the former Duchess of Kent residential home as a potential site for redevelopment. This is in the same vicinity and happens to back onto the States Dairy at Bailiff’s Cross roads, which could be vacated if the dairy gets its wish to relocate deeper into St Andrew’s. Together, the two sites total 3.3 acres, which is about four-times the size of the flagship Beauville development in Ville au Roi where, in 2019, the Guernsey Housing Association built 14 one-bedroom flats, two two-bedroom houses and six three-bedroom houses for the States’ Health and Social Care departments. The project won the Multiple Residential Development accolade at the 2020 Guernsey Design Awards and the various units have been allocated to a mix of new recruits and current PEH staff, a mere 150 metres along the road from the hospital entrance at Les Oberlands.
This was hot on the heels of the GHA’s refurbishment of Cour du Parc at La Charroterie. Previously under the management of the States Housing Authority, Guernsey’s only tower block had been vacant since 2011, when the building was deemed no longer fit for residential use. Contractors RG Falla built the 11-storey building in the late 1960s and, nearly 50 years later, made a successful tender to carry out the extensive restoration work, also increasing the number of units by eight from the original layout and adding a second lift within a new 10-storey lift shaft at the elevated rear of the building. Work was completed in 2014 and Cour du Parc now provides 50 one- and two-bedroom apartments with some specified as key worker housing and others allocated for GHA’s partial ownership scheme.
This coincided with the 2014 report of the Key Worker Housing Group, an 18-strong consortium ranging across eight States departments. The aim was to enhance the ability of the States to recruit and retain local and, where necessary, non-local key workers in priority public services. The report investigated at length (31 pages) how to rationalise and integrate the provision of key worker accommodation to meet the housing needs of those on modest incomes, a faction termed ‘the intermediate housing market’, without creating imbalance in the marketplace.
Need and balance were the overriding sentiments of the report, in fact a Guernsey Press article from May 2014 quotes a Health & Social Services Department spokesperson as saying: ‘Currently there is little, if any, demand for an increase in the quantity of staff accommodation.’ This was in answer to the loss of the former Mapleton Private Hotel at Jerbourg, which had been used by nurses before being replaced by six new local market houses. The claim was later tempered by adding that better suited accommodation would indeed help recruitment.
This begs the question of what has happened in eight short years to create the current plight in accommodating non-local key workers. One of the predominant factors is the rampant housing market during the past 30 months. Long-term most key workers typically want to buy or rent their own homes and have faced, indeed added to, the same pressures as local house hunters. Some key worker tenants in the private sector have seen their rents escalate beyond their means and some of their colleagues with houses to sell have cashed in and moved away. The bedsits, apartments and houses they close the door on are rapidly taken-up by an eager waiting public before incoming key workers even get through arrivals. No wonder some turn back disillusioned before they’ve unpacked.
Of course, this is not exclusive to Guernsey. Jersey had almost 200 unfilled hospital posts in 2019, both islands each covering the vast majority of vacancies with well-qualified but expensive locum or agency staff.
To make matters worse the Guernsey Press last month quoted NHS figures from 2021 showing there were almost 40,000 nursing vacancies in England.
The focus is largely on health professionals but it’s the same story across all our public services, especially teaching. Building new schools is never far from the States agenda when in fact the consensus of opinion is that teachers make a good school, not the buildings. I say improve upon but don’t discard the schools we have. The bricks and mortar will be better used to help newcomers settle into good-quality accommodation, not luxurious but perfectly comfortable. If made to feel welcome and part of our community they will soon look to the private sector for a home to call their own.
It makes one wonder when these grandiose development plans for the hospital, new schools and a police station are drawn up if a business plan is also devised to explain where the crucial personnel will be found and, more to the point, accommodated. These skilled people are in great demand yet Guernsey offers an enviable lifestyle. If shown the appreciation their skills deserve, Guernsey could have the pick of the best.
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