I am writing to express my dismay at the lack of progress deputies have made in addressing our island’s housing needs.
You have spent years discussing and planning, discussing and planning repeatedly, yet have achieved nothing throughout the entire last term of government. You should be ashamed of your lack of progress.
Our island desperately needs revisions to its housing regulations to enable the seamless conversion of old office spaces into modern apartments. Our heritage and listing regulations must be updated to allow for the conversion of old listed buildings and spaces above shops, without preserving outdated internal architectural features. This is a system that has been adopted in London and many other beautiful cities.
By way of example, when you examined the site for Castel Hospital, it was immediately listed and labelled as too difficult. You should not accept this; it’s our property, and we should be able to develop it into small units, bedsits, and one- and two-bedroom flats. There are many sites around the island that you control that you are not using fully. Please do something about it immediately.
We can no longer afford the privilege of preserving the past while our young people have nowhere to live.
We should be trying much harder to keep our young people here and encourage them to return to our beautiful safe island before we start trying to bring even more people to fill our jobs and homes. We need to understand just how dire the housing situation has become when we are now using half of our tourist bed stock to address homelessness.
We need to look again at empty properties and tax them heavily, very heavily.
If you are struggling with finances, you should raise a bond or ask your island to support you. Just do something! At the moment, you’re paralysed, and it’s pathetic. We must have better candidates in the future who have run businesses and who are brave enough and able to understand risk. We previously had a system that used conseillers and deputies; can we adopt this again?
Please, please stop talking about this and lets have some action now; we are all fed up with hearing about your plans but seeing no results.
I must stress how much I love Guernsey and would not live anywhere else.
Jenny Froome
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