Vallée Vinery

The Guernsey Housing Association’s latest development, Vallée Vinery in St Martin’s, has recently welcomed its new residents. A mix of rental and partial ownership properties, the houses were in high demand when they were completed at the end of the summer, with all of them tenanted within a fortnight.

The Guernsey Housing Association (GHA) has built 16 two and threebedroom houses on the site, with nine for rent and seven for partial ownership. It’s a development that the non-profit organisation has been wanting to pursue for some time, as development manager Phil Roussel explained: “It’s a former vinery site which we cleared quite a while ago. We laid it to grass while we waited for planning permission so that we had a good idea of what we were dealing with and it looked a little better for the neighbours.

“It took us three designs and around two years to get planning permission for these houses through a rounding off policy that classified this area as completing the neighbouring estate of States housing. There is still a field to one side of the site which will continue to be used for agricultural land as that area wasn’t classed as necessary to round off the site, so we don’t have permission at this stage to use it for housing.”

The new houses are situated off La Route des Coutures in St Martin’s. The new development’s name comes from the site’s former life as the GHA thought it was a good way to mark its history by retaining the identity of the original La Vallée Vinery.

The houses themselves are a fairly standard offering for the GHA, with a real focus on build quality. For Phil, while the construction is key, they also do their best to make the houses attractive: “We have a standard specification that we give to the architect we are using on our project, and in this case he came up with these houses. They might not be the most architecturally exciting but they have got some nice features and, most importantly, they are good quality houses which have all the things you’d want from a property.

“While we do standardise our homes in a lot of ways, we also try to add in little quirks to differentiate our properties. These houses, for example, have a diagonal wall upstairs on the three bedrooms and the stairs are a bit different to our other designs. These properties are also far more neutral in colour than our last development, which was quite bright.”

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But the GHA is clear it is the quality of the build that is the most important factor, something Phil says the tenants living in these properties should benefit from: “The houses are blockwork with cavity construction and a very sizeable chunk of insulation in the cavity. As always, we have exceeded the building regulations by a decent margin. We also ensure they are air tight, so we specify an air tightness of two as opposed to the building regulations requirement, which has just been reduced to five. Altogether, it means the houses are very efficient and those living in them should have some very low heating bills.”

Kelly Hind has recently moved into a three-bedroom partial ownership house after a considerable period on the waiting list. For her, it’s been a very good move: “I’m absolutely delighted with it, I love it. It’s a great space for my two children, and everything is such good quality, as well as having features such as the large attic which is so useful. We moved from States housing and this is wonderful in comparison. It’s so well-constructed and well-insulated that I don’t think we’re going to need to put the heating on this winter.”

For Phil, that’s an achievement for the GHA. The non-profit organisation always has to balance meeting the desires of its tenants with ensuring that its properties have longevity: “The quality of the build is really important to us. We never waste money on unnecessary items, but we make sure the house is really well built. Inside the houses, there are solid core doors that will stand up well to use, the staircase has been built as a nice feature, there’s a good quality kitchen. We try to use decdnt fixtures and fittings but at a reasonable price. It’s important to remember that the GHA needs to maintain these properties. Our mandate doesn’t allow us to sell them so we need to make sure they are in good condition for the next 40-odd years.

“We therefore build them robustly so that they are easy to maintain. We also standardise things as much as possible, so we can easily replace anything that breaks such as a kitchen unit or door. At the end of the day, all of our houses have to reach the same standards but we do our best to make tweaks that will give them some individuality.”

The GHA has a sizeable waiting list for both its rented and partial ownership accommodation, with demand high for the properties. For Kelly, the wait was certainly worth it: “We had been on the waiting list for quite a long time but that was partly because we were very keen to stay in St Martin’s. My children go to school nearby and this area suits us very well. I love this location and living in this parish so it’s absolutely perfect for us.”

While Kelly loves living in St Martin’s, the GHA was also keen to make sure that the parish welcomed the new properties. For Phil, making sure the houses benefited everyone was a priority: “We’ve taken quite a lot of trouble to make sure that the whole area looks attractive with planting and nice finishes. We also built new fencing for the States housing on the boundary of these properties to try to give them a benefit from the development as well.

“Importantly, we’re also encouraging people to be in this area – we’ve put a walkway through the estate so that dog walkers can use it and when children are going to school they can come through here and then walk up the lane to school and stay away from the main roads. We want these houses to be part of the parish so we put the parish crest on the new sign. It’s really important to us that we build communities, not just houses.”

The timeframe of this build obviously meant that it was affected by the Covid lockdowns, but Phil said the impact wasn’t as bad as it could have been: “We had got to a certain point before this year’s lockdown which meant that we had ordered all the materials that we needed and most of it was either stored on island or already on site. At the same time, the nature of the individual houses meant that as soon as work could start again, we got as much labour as we could on site and were able to progress fairly quickly.

“Rihoys certainly did the best they could in the circumstances and we were very pleased with them. We’ve obviously used them on previous projects and have always had a good relationship with them, but they were exceptional on this. When we do a build, we see it as a team effort and everyone pulls together to make sure we get a good job done.” Before work could start on the Vallée Vinery site, there was one major problem which needed to be dealt with. The most invasive plant in Guernsey, Japanese knotweed, had firmly taken root throughout the area.

The plant is renowned for spreading rapidly and has caused issues throughout much of the island. On a derelict site such as the former vinery, it had been able to grow rampantly but could not remain if buildings were to be put on the site.

“When we bought the site, there was a substantial infestation of knotweed on it,” said Phil. “That needed to be sorted out before any work could begin. The way we looked to deal with it was by screening the ground to remove the rhizomes from the knotweed, which are the root fragments responsible for the plant’s spread.

“Dealing with the knotweed was always going to be a challenge, but the main problem we actually had was the weather. When we came to screen the soil it was raining so it became very claggy and that method wouldn’t work. We had to hand pick the rhizomes out of the soil, which was very labour intensive and really not what we would have chosen to do.”

Once the rhizomes had been separated, there was then the need to ensure that they were safely disposed of so that they couldn’t do any further damage, as Phil explained: “We disposed of the rhizomes offsite. The screened soil was then used to form encapsulated bunds around the site. Those were then sealed to ensure that the soil could not contaminate anything further. Then, wherever the knotweed was, we put a membrane in at around a metre deep which stops any remaining knotweed from affecting the site.”

With the knotweed removed, construction could start on site.