Constable Richard Vibert has called a parish assembly amid continuing uncertainty about the future of proposals to build a 65-unit starter-home scheme, where buyers would receive a 25% discount, on a parcel of land between St Peter’s Village and St George’s School.
Last year, Environment Minister Steve Luce rejected the plans for the scheme, called Ville du Manoir, for a number of reasons, including that they would breach the Island Plan because the site is an area of high-quality agricultural land.
Parish Deputy Rowland Huelin has also expressed concerns about the scheme, and has called for smaller parcels of land across the parish to be used for affordable homes.
His predecessor, Senator Kristina Moore, and the previous Constable, John Refault, have come out in strong support of reviving the plans, pointing out there was high demand for family homes in the parish.
Earlier this year Mr Vibert lodged a proposition aiming to resurrect the Ville du Manoir scheme by asking Environment Minister John Young to bring forward a revision of the Island Plan, which sets out Jersey’s planning strategies.
He said that parishioners would need to decide what to do going forward and would be given three options to vote on during the meeting, which will start at 7.30pm on Thursday.
‘I am essentially going to ask parishioners three things: Whether they want to continue to pursue the building of affordable first-time-buyer homes in the parish, whether they want to continue with the proposition that I have lodged or whether they want us to work with planning and environment officers to develop the 2020 Island Plan for a solution that everyone is happy with.’
He would not comment on which option he would prefer but said that it was unlikely affordable housing could be built on several areas of brownfield [already developed] land within the parish.
‘Smaller pockets of land can’t be used for affordable first-time-buyer homes because the economies of scale are not there,’ he said.
‘Also, you can’t really use brownfield sites because they tend to be too expensive, as developers are always keen to buy them. If you want to build at 75% of the cost, you need to do it on land that is cheaper. We also don’t have much brownfield space in St Peter. We have the Airport in this parish and that takes up a lot of space in itself.
‘We do have other smaller sites in the parish, and we can look at building other types of homes there, but you can’t really use them for affordable housing.’
