Jersey Plans Major Increase In Housing Stock

by Jason Gorringe, Tax-News.com, London

10 January 2002

The Housing Committee of the States of Jersey yesterday published a long-deferred major strategic policy report for 2002-2006, in which it calls for sites for more than 1,100 new homes to be zoned in the first five years of the new Island Plan.

Currently the Island Plan includes provision for only 750 new homes, but the Committee says the larger number will allow them to provide 500 rental and 600 first-time buyer homes. Even so, says the Committee the real shortfall in homes is probably as high as 1,450 - but it thinks that development of the additional sites could be phased over a longer period than five years, thus reducing pressure on the construction industry. Alongside this more extended programme, it would be beneficial to create a ‘residential land bank’.

‘Restricting too tightly the supply of land will only have the effect of increasing land values and will ensure that any newly-rezoned sites continue to be the subject of intense speculation,’ warn the committee.

Pressure on the availability and price of houses continues to be one of the major constraints on development of the island's business community, with incoming managers and specialists facing dramatic restrictions on their ability to find reasonably priced accommodation, in the face of a rabidly 'NIMBY' existing population.

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