To address Guernsey’s significant housing pressures, the Committee for the Environment & Infrastructure has published the ‘Guernsey Housing Plan’ which lays out the wide-ranging and extensive actions that need to be taken to tackle these challenges head on.
The Plan aims to ensure that “All people living in Guernsey will have access to a range of good quality housing that is affordable, secure, energy efficient and adequate for their needs.”
This Plan has been developed following extensive analysis by independent housing market experts to help understand the full range of Guernsey’s housing pressures, why they have occurred and their impact. This included evidence gathering and consultation with government and key external stakeholders that has provided a wealth of information to make sure the right problems are tackled in the right order, recognising the sensitivities and interdependencies of housing markets.
The Plan prioritises 28 workstreams designed to ensure positive and sustainable changes to tackle these identified problems across all areas of the housing market between now and the next election.
These workstreams are grouped into six Priority Areas:
- Affordable housing delivery
- Private market supply
- Private rental sector
- Market niches (including key worker, first time buyers, homelessness)
- Quality and energy efficiency
- Data and evidence
To ensure change is wide ranging, progress will be made against all these Priority Areas over the next three years, covering cross-committee workstreams such as:
- Investigating incentives and penalties to encourage the completion of private market housing developments
- Developing enhanced TRP proposals for derelict land, greenhouse sites and unoccupied buildings
- Developing proposals to strengthen the rights and obligations of private landlords and tenants
- Defining ‘key worker’ and developing government’s approach to supporting their housing needs in the medium to long term
- Considering opportunities to use modular constructions
- Exploring and implementing options to increase the standards and energy efficiency of existing and future housing stock
- Developing approaches to encourage right sizing in the private sector
Deputy Lindsay de Sausmarez, President of the Committee for the Environment & Infrastructure, said: “I know how hard it can be to find an affordable and decent place to live for many people.
“The challenges facing our housing market – which the report says is in a state of ‘systemic market failure’ – are deep-rooted and complicated, so we are not naïve about the work ahead. The Guernsey Housing Plan brings together all the different measures that we need to pursue to tackle these problems.
“The Plan paints a realistic picture of the scale of the challenges we face, but if we can deliver these actions, this is not insurmountable. It requires States committees, private developers and landlords to pull together to bring about positive change.”
