"Culture of overpromising and underdelivering" led to loss of affordable homes

Wednesday 19 July 2023

The loss of nine affordable homes was the result of a "culture of overpromising and underdelivering" within the Planning Department, according to the Minister in charge of it.

Reform's Deputy Sam Mézec last year secured States Assembly approval for a policy to ensure at least 15% of all homes in developments of more than 50 dwellings are designated as 'affordable' by January.

However, Environment Minister Deputy Jonathan Renouf came under fire in the States Assembly this week for failing to complete the supplementary guidance to give effect to this policy.

He said he very much regretted that he had been unable to produce and adopt the guidance.

He added: "Planning applications for private developments of this scale occur relatively infrequently in Jersey, but nevertheless there is a clear and pressing need to ensure the policy becomes operational.

"I've been working on the development of this guidance, and I will aim to bring it forward by the end of this month, which should then enable policy H6 to take effect."

Pictured: Deputy Renouf said he "very much regrets" the delay to completing the planning guidance.

The delay, he said, had been due to a "number of factors" which he summarised as "pressure of work on a small team working on many different fronts, which meant not all work has been completed in the timescale I would have liked".

Deputy Renouf added: "The issue I find most personally embarrassing is that I did say I would bring it forward previously and I wasn't able to do so.

"I think there is a something of a culture of overpromising and underdelivering.

"If the minister says he wants something, there is a tendency to want to satisfy the minister, and I have made very clear to officers that I want realistic assessments of when things can be done so that I can make proper decisions about what order to do them in and provide information to this assembly that is more likely to be met.

"That is a conversation that I have had with officers and they are well aware of my opinion about that."

He further revealed that one development, the Samuel Le Riche House on Plat Douet Road, had gone through without being subjected to the new policy.

This means that the development of 61 homes would have yielded nine affordable homes, which led Deputy Montfort Tadier to state that "because the minister's department hasn't managed to get the supplementary guidance in time, we've lost nine affordable homes that we would have otherwise had".