Jersey Construction Council chairman Martin Holmes said they were working closely with the government and its arms-length organisations, such as Andium Homes and Ports of Jersey, to get projects off the ground quicker.
Mr Holmes, who is also a director at construction group Garenne, said there were a ‘good number of larger projects’ under way or in the pipeline, highlighting the Our Hospital project, government office project and Fort Regent. Other large-scale projects include a £100m strategy to transform sport facilities, alongside numerous housing developments across the Island, including at South Hill.
This week, Ronez, one of Jersey’s largest construction material providers, also warned that building costs were likely to rise following the loss of locally-sourced sand because of the closure of the Simon Sand quarry in St Ouen’s Bay.
‘The greatest concern the industry has is the gestation period of getting projects from concept and planning – to shovel ready,’ said Mr Holmes.
Mr Holmes added that ‘uncertainty’ around when work would progress was an issue.
‘The biggest problem is a stop-start industry,’ he said, adding that the sector needed ‘some certainty when the work is coming through’.
He added: ‘The worst thing you can have is three or four really big projects coming at the same time, and the next year nothing happens.’
He said that this inconsistency presented a problem, affecting activity and making businesses ‘inefficient’.
‘That is the challenge,’ said Mr Holmes, which he said had come to the forefront with all the big capital programmes ‘on the horizon’.
‘The challenge for government is to get through the planning process as quickly as possible,’ he said.
Mr Holmes said he appreciated that the planning process on any small island was inevitably going to be complex for bigger schemes.
‘With some of these larger projects, it is a very political environment,’
He said that the Island had been talking about a proposed new hospital for several years.
‘It becomes very difficult for a project to get over the line,’ he said, with strong opinions over developments sitting alongside the ‘challenge of actually designing and delivering, getting planning permission and building the project’.
In a submission to the Environment, Housing and Infrastructure Scrutiny Panel, which is conducting a review of affordable housing in the Island, the JeCC said there should ‘definitely’ be a quicker way to deliver the schemes and the approach would ‘significantly reduce the planning risk’ and make them more viable and deliverable.
Speaking to the JEP, Mr Holmes said: ‘If we are serious about sorting out affordable housing, we have to get these schemes to market a lot quicker.’
He added that the situation required a ‘positive approach and thinking by all’.
