What's needed for a new housing strategy?

Tuesday 12 June 2018

A policy letter has today been published by Environment & Infrastructure detailing the findings of a report it had carried out into the local housing market.

The committee has set out a number of work streams it will use to develop a "holistic housing strategy", using the findings and recommendations of the report, which was done by KPMG.

Affordable Housing (including social housing) is one of the 23 priorities agreed by the States of Guernsey. While the Committee for the Environment & Infrastructure has overall responsibility for advising the States and developing policy with respect to general housing (including policy provision for Social and Affordable Housing), issues identified in the KPMG report fall into a number of other Committees’ mandates, most notably the Committee for Employment & Social Security, the Policy & Resources Committee, the Committee for Economic Development and the Development & Planning Authority.

As such, the development of a Housing Strategy within the estimated two-year timeframe would require much cross-committee work and support.

The work streams identified in the policy letter are as follows:

• Adopting reduced Strategic Housing Indicators instead of Targets.
• A review of the partial ownership scheme.
• Analysis of current and future cost of government intervention in the housing market, and the economic and financial implications of possible policy interventions including assessment of the impacts of a deposit guarantee scheme for first-time buyers.
• Development of a Key Worker Housing Strategy.
• Analysis and assessment of the private rental market including adequacy of legislative protection for tenants and landlords.
• Review of the 2014 analysis of the reduction in Document Duty for first-time buyers, and a review of the Conveyancing Court and bond fees.
• Development of an elderly tenure strategyincluding assessment  of specialised housing and extra care housing requirements.

Deputy Michelle Le Clerc, President of Employment & Social Security, said she was grateful that her committee had been consulted on this policy letter.

"The policy letter represents the Committee's views well, and explains the need for a new Housing Strategy to be developed. However, [it] would like to reiterate that it is not fully supportive of some aspects of the KPMG report, and that there are some gaps which it sees as being an integral part of the develpment of the new housing strategy," she said.

"The Committee will encourage the States to support the propositions set out in the policy letter, in order to set the direction for housing policy for the next few years."

Alongside changing up the targets to more flexible and realistic goals, one area the policy letter empahsises is that it acknowledges its stance on a First Time Buyers scheme. It says any scheme of this kind would exacerbate longer term issues of affordability, and could have a "very negative inflationary impact on the housing market as a whole".

It also stated that the committee does not agree that a second Partial Ownership Scheme would bring benefit to first time buyers on Guernsey.