Deputy pushes for reversal of open market changes

Friday 02 July 2021

A States Deputy sitting on both the Scrutiny Management Committee and the Development and Planning Authority wants changes made to the Population Management Law, saying that changes to people's Open Market housing rights are forcing them into Local Market properties.

Deputy John Dyke raised concerns about the current status of the Open Market during his manifesto last year, and repeated those concerns in a recent scrutiny hearing with the Committee for Home Affairs.

The Population Management Law came into effect in 2017, enacting a number of changes to housing rights in the island, several of which revolved around ‘closing a loophole’ in the law that allowed multiple families to live in one Open Market property.

The Open Market was split into four categories: A. B, C and D, with most family homes falling in the ‘A’ category. After the changes, no more than three ‘non-familial’ groups could reside within a category A.

Pictured: The concept of the open market was devised after the Second World War to make Guernsey more attractive to people looking to relocate.

It was deemed a good thing at the time, stopping off-island investors buying large properties and filling them with numerous residents, none of whom were related; however, Deputy Dyke said this has had a knock-on effect to the local market, exacerbating an already precarious housing crisis.

“These changes have pushed people from open market to local market housing,” he said. “I don’t know the exact figures, but it’s in the hundreds.”

“By pushing people from the open housing market and into the local housing market you’ve taken local market rental properties off the market,” he said.

Deputy Dyke has also argued that the changes are unfair on owners of open market properties, who had their housing rights changed when the law came into force.

“You can’t do as much with your house as you used to,” he said. “It could be deemed a human rights issue, where people who own open houses have had their rights changed with no compensation.”

“During the election campaign we spoke to a lot of people who had concerns,” he said.

Pictured: Deputy Dyke included his open market concerns within his 2020 manifesto.

It’s not the first time these concerns have been raised, with hundreds of open market residents responding to the Open Market Forum in 2018.

The OMF was founded by the late Zef Eisenberg, Guy Anderson, and Helen O’Meara in October 2017, after they raised concerns that the States of Guernsey hadn’t understood the economic benefit of the open market.

The Population Management Law 2017 is currently under review by the Committee for Home Affairs, and the President sought to reassure Deputy Dyke during the recent Scrutiny meeting.

Deputy Rob Prow said the status of the open housing market is under review, and that Deputy Dyke’s concerns had been taken on board.