More screed – of the building type – fewer excuses

Horace Camp, in a recent Guernsey Press, spoke of his concern over affordable homes. It is a fear, I suspect held by many hard-working families.

Some of these folk may already have spent years paying rent to private landlords in an island which sadly boasts, according to one survey, the highest housing cost to income ratio in the world – awesome.

And worse, they can look forward to more years of the same. It is likely after last years’ dismal outturn of only 26 newly-built homes that it will be some years before new dwellings become available. The GHA reports no new builds in 2023. They have not so far put 2024 figures on their website. I’m not sure this is because there are too many new houses to count.

A question I asked politicians last year and to prospective deputies and focus groups this year was: ‘What do you say to hard-working families who, for the last five years have been paying more in rent to private landlords than for a mortgage and can probably look forward to the same for the foreseeable future?’

No one had an answer. But a few were eager to agree with me, whilst I had a vote to cast, that it was a crisis.

So, reader, do you think the answer is a soon-to-be-expanded Island Development Plan which has proved toothless in the face of large single family dwellings but an uncontrollable beast for those normal people wanting a normal home? I don't.

One may also think, as I do, that having large amounts of cash to help satisfy all the IDP requirements is the only way that the IDP appetite can be tamed. In that case, as often happens, wealth gives access to a better version of the law.

Not that I’m against large homes. Anyone who fancies taking on development risk is welcome to the profit. It is a highly complex business and downside risk can be disastrous.

Perhaps you think adding to the puzzle with the recent purchase of Leale’s Yard without reference to the newly-formed Housing Committee will speedily address the housing issue. I don’t.

Maybe you think instead that this was a crude exercise of power from a new P&R that didn’t want the Housing Committee formed in the first place – three of the remaining four members preferred a Housing Commission instead. I do. Do you think this event augurs well for the future? I don’t.

Do you think being expensively wedded to certain environmental policies when considering builds for normal people is the answer when the biggest single player (the United States of America) has decoupled itself from agreements on climate change?

Maybe you think, as I do, that we have lost control of the true cost of adhering to these environmental policies?

Certainly, Environment & Infrastructure wouldn’t even tell how much an electric bus cost.

Maybe you question the strategic priorities of doing very much at all in this direction, especially when you consider the biggest environmental threat is the nuclear power station (the largest of its type in the world) situated just 15 miles east of the Bailiwick

Perhaps a better use of E&I resources would be to concentrate on monitoring these external radioactive emissions and disseminate emergency plans for the population and, locally, spend less on vanity projects but more on buildings for people?

Should there be a release of strontium 90 from France, this writer will be cross, knowing, as he’s taking his last breaths, that those scaly crickets with their hardy exoskeletons will have finally won and won’t need any further legislative help to cement their position as the most important creature in Guernsey.

But to the matter in hand.

What I do know is a hard-working, dual-income family who rent a family home with parking will be paying about £2,500 per month on rent. Think of the tax the States gets on that at 20%.

Also, the gross monthly wage on £2,500 per month is £3,425. The difference of £925 per month is tax and social insurance on gross wages. Add employers' social insurance and that’s a staggering £14k pa to the States excluding tax on rental income.

In combination, you can see why the States is hardly incentivised to build.

To add further insult, even though these hard-working families are paying industrial amounts of tax, the States seems intent to spend it only on land banking, not building – no sir – £20m. in the last five years.

For families in this financial quicksand, it must be like paying into the States for a couple of anvils and a grand piano to help them sink quicker into an asset-poor financial morass.

It is a disgraceful state of affairs. Don’t forget, this is a minority Assembly voted in using an agreeable IWV system only if you were an incumbent. Fewer than 20,000 voted, far less than half the electorate. We can say that even though the States can’t yet tell us how many people live here.

My final contention is that through, inter alia, the good work of some lobby groups, we are finally getting some semblance of equal gender diversity in the Assembly. This is not enough.

There are not enough other voices in the States to make it appropriately representative. For example, if there were 40 tenants in the States with the ability to buy a house, do you think it would accept the sclerotic inertia in new builds which is obviously helping, in the main, those who already own their own home?

Pre-election, I opined that the States had given us more of what we didn’t want and less of what we did. I was talking in terms of legislation affecting small business, inflation (much higher than Jersey) and economic growth.

But the same was true of screed. Seemingly endless amounts from the last Assembly about why the States was unable to build new homes.

This term, I am hoping for more screed. A different screed. The floor covering screed that relates to actual new builds, rather than excuses.

I await an answer to my question.

Guy Plummer