Landowners who are “sitting” on properties of interest have been warned they could face financial penalties in a bid to help combat the island’s ongoing housing crisis.
The President of Guernsey’s newest principal committee faced a public Scrutiny hearing last week where he was questioned on what it is doing.
Deputy Steve Williams explicitly stated that his Housing Committee intends to move beyond incentives and consider penalties for owners who sit on zoned land without developing it.
When speaking about the current lack of dwellings available for rent or purchase, Deputy Williams said: “We’ve got a deficit of 180 per annum there. So what can we do?”
“As well as incentives, we’re looking at penalties,” he explained. “We’d like to incentivise people to work and build homes, but if they won’t, then we’ve got to look at the penalties.
“There’s already actions being taken about derelict hotels and disused sites, and we’re seeing a lot more proactive action by the States now in terms of trying to take some action on those people that are just sat there with assets that appear to be able to afford to leave them, but we actually need some homes.”
During the Scrutiny meeting, the Housing Committee also made clear that it intends to use transparency as a form of soft pressure via a published list of sites with planning permission that are not being built.
Deputy Williams said that staff had been working up “a list of all the sites that have got planning permission that haven’t been developed”, and he announced their intention to publish the list using “information in the public domain”.
“It’s all in individual planning applications, hundreds of them, and because there’s currently about 439 plots of land with detailed planning permission that’s not been built,” he said.
“It helps us to monitor what’s not coming forward, and start talking to those people about, ‘well, are you going to do it, or aren’t you going to do it? and what are the obstacles?”
When pressed on what potential benefits this list would have, Deputy Williams said “it will expose, to some extent, some that have just been sat there and not doing anything”.
As part of the Scrutiny Hearing, Guernsey’s newest principal committee also declared its intent to commit to tangible targets later this year.