Maintaining a balance

How can we balance the needs of an expanding population, of first-time buyers and low- to middle- earners with the preservation of the rural environment? Alasdair Crosby talked to the Housing Minister, Deputy Russell Labey

‘A s somebody whose ancestors on both sides of my family have all been farmers, maternally in St Ouen, paternally in

Grouville, every time a field goes for building development, it hurts.’

The Housing Minister, Deputy Russell Labey, was discussing how the housing needs of Jersey’s ever-expanding population could be balanced with any meaningful preservation of Jersey’s farmland areas.

‘If we want farmers and growers not to use pesticides for things like eelworm, we need fields to lie fallow for two or three years - for that we need all the fields available.’

There has always been a housing shortage; homes are built and fields re-zoned to address the shortage; the population grows further, and the shortage is merely perpetuated. What’s the answer? Perhaps there isn’t one?

As he said, government can but strive to maintain a balance, something that is incredibly difficult to achieve. ‘What I have found in this job is that we are about 1,800 homes short in the last decade.’

The sort of preferred potential development sites are ‘brown-field’ ones, such as government-owned sites in town, or, for example, the old Les Quennevais School, which is going to be used as the Health Department while the new Hospital is being built, but will be available by 2026.

And will fields have to be re-zoned? ‘I worry that productive agricultural land is being taken out of use. Some green-field sites have been identified in the Island Plan, but that’s not my responsibility - that’s the responsibility for the Minister for Planning and Environment. But we have to be careful and we should be planning now so that we can avoid using green-field sites as much as possible. One or two are probably OK to be developed - if they have an awkward shape, for example, and back on to existing development.’

There have been some high-profile development cases: fields near Montà-l’Abbé, Seaside Café (formerly Café Romany) at Grève de Lecq, Midway Café at St Brelade’s Bay, the field opposite St John’s Church, the field at St Peter’s Village, Water’s Edge Hotel at Bouley Bay… the list seems endless. But: ‘There is a Planning process now,’ he said, ‘which is the opportunity for people to support or oppose the development of sites. They are heard in public, before an independent UK Planning inspector, and at the end of that mix it will go to the States Assembly for approval or not, and historically those have been very long and detailed debates; not everything has gone through.

‘But we have to wake up and realise that there is a long waiting list of people wanting homes. Once again, it’s about striking the right balance.’

He continued: ‘If we talk in general terms, I confess that I am troubled when I see planning permission for a six-bed super-home in a rural parish when six family units is what we are crying out for. I think it is inappropriate in a lot of circumstances.’

So - too many super-homes and not enough affordable houses for the not so well-off?

‘What I am also trying to do to help address that is to make the use of modern methods of construction (MMC) a reality in Jersey. I have set up a working party to work over the next few months, looking at the viability and feasibility of effectively buying homes in kit form, so they are constructed elsewhere, and only assembled in the Island.

‘It’s cleaner, it’s greener, it’s far less labour intensive for the Island, because you need far fewer people to assemble these houses than to actually construct them from scratch, and they are potentially cheaper, or we can buy sufficient quantities to take advantage of economies of scale. One of the biggest problems with MMC is getting enough people to believe in it. These aren’t flatpack; these aren’t IKEA homes, they are sophisticated, fantastically insulated homes made in component form, put together. They can be made into 20- or 30- story towers, or you can have single units or anything between the two.

‘So, if we can get a three-bed unit to Portsmouth Docks for under £100,000 - can we do the rest for under £100,000? Thus potentially we could have a three-bedroom house for under £200,000. Is that going to be possible? That’s what I am working out now.’

“Empty property

is a luxury the Island can’t afford, because so many people want a home

There is a perception that some owners are allowing their homes to fall into dilapidation so that when redevelopment plans are submitted, the feeling is that ‘anything is better than what’s there now’!

He replied: ‘It is a fact that Jersey is way behind other jurisdictions, in terms both of empty properties and in avoiding them. Empty property is a luxury the Island can’t afford, because so many people want a home. In the UK, for example, were I to leave my flat empty for two years, the Council Tax would go up 50% and that figure would be likely to rise year-on-year if it remained empty. There are also initiatives that go under the title of “No Use Empty”. No Use Empty agencies have considerable powers to enter a property, refurbish it, let it out, and once they have recouped the capital they spent on it, hand it back to the landlord. Legally, that can be done.

‘In reality, they try to work with the owner in bringing that property back into use. So I would like to bring in a “no-useempty Jersey” initiative.’

Unfortunately, there are plenty of houses in Jersey that are not sold as ‘homes’ but as investment opportunities in terms of ‘buying to let’. Did this worry him?

‘In terms of foreign investors, I’ve already stopped the conveyancing of properties by share transfer. That means that those buying properties in Jersey should be qualified to live in a property in Jersey. That won’t stop the local buy-to-let market, which anecdotally is very prevalent. So, I am undertaking work to quantify what the scale of it is, and what levers government can use to ensure that somebody’s “nice-to-have” isn’t depriving someone else of their necessity to get on to the housing ladder- a situation that is unethical.’ The Minister was asked if he shared the concern that there was a diverging gap between the ‘Haves’ and the ‘Have-nots’?

‘That is indeed a massive worry, as is also the fact of Jersey families having to uproot and go to live elsewhere because of the high cost of housing in the Island.. From talking to my own constituents, I think what weighs most heavily on their minds is the cost of living in Jersey, and also housing - and the two are linked.

‘In terms of the super-wealthy, I am on record as saying that I am concerned how many of them are arriving annually. The last lot of legislation was for five to come to live in Jersey annually. Over the past three years, we are averaging around 20. There is no cap. And I think it is time that we had one, otherwise the situation is unsustainable.

‘Simply, that’s why I took the job of Housing Minister: to see what I could do to make a difference.’

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