ESS boss zoning in on housing crisis

Sunday 25 October 2020

The new States needs to show some "gumption" in tackling the island's lack of affordable housing, the new Employment & Social Security President has said, as he floated the idea of redeveloping some of Guernsey's "tired" housing estates.

In his inaugural speech, Deputy Peter Roffey said the States needed to follow the example set by the late Housing Minister Dave Jones, who regarded the former Grand Bouet estate as a "monument" of Guernsey's social housing failures.

The Vale Deputy, who died in 2016, led the two-year demolition of the 150-property site, which has since been redeveloped. It was cited as an example of the kind of bold thinking that Deputy Roffey wants his committee, and the States more widely, to embrace. 

"He had the gumption to demolish the old Grand Bouet. There are many other tired housing estates that we are responsible for where the homes are no longer fit for the modern world - poorly insulated and simply the wrong sized to meet modern demands.

"The proper redevelopment of these sites could not only produce much better housing, but also significantly more of them."

Pictured: The new Employment & Social Security Committee - Deputies John Gollop, Tina Bury, Peter Roffey, Lindsay de Sausmarez and Steve Falla. 

Any such project would inevitably involve the Guernsey Housing Association, which Deputy Roffey said would be important in stimulating development. 

"That would not only leverage private cash, reducing the demands on the taxpayer, but it would also ensure that home ownership is not forgotten in this programme."

He stressed that there is a deep-lying affordable housing crisis which is not getting any better. He said Guernsey's society and its economy will suffer unless his committee can find solutions that will help young people onto the housing ladder. 

"If young people cannot reasonably afford to establish their own households in the island of their birth, then once we have seen the effects of Covid-19 pass, we will see an exodus of human capital that Guernsey can ill afford," he warned his States colleagues. 

Pictured: Employment & Social Security Peter Roffey is planning far-reaching changes to social housing.