By John Refault
NOT too long ago, the parish Constables held considerable powers and were able to mete out strong sentences for any acts which he/she believed were not in the best interests of the parish. Unfortunately, in more recent times, many cries have been made in the corridors of the States Chamber to have Constables removed from the States and have their seats filled by additional Deputies.
One such example of this power came in 1698, when the Constable of St Peter ended up getting the Dean jailed. This came about following a request from the parish priest to be given funds to hold an additional communion service on Christmas Day. The Constable refused due to the additional cost of communion wine to be borne by the rate payers.
Not satisfied with this rejection, the priest appealed to the Dean, who subsequently excommunicated the then Constable for barring access to an additional communion service.
The Constable took his case to the Island’s court and the Dean was sent to prison. However, the Island’s clergy attended the prison and demanded the release of the Dean.
Today the Constables still hold significant powers where the parish has a strong need to make decisions on behalf of their parishioners and it is their seats in the States Chambers that make it so.
Matters of strong parish needs are debated within the Island’s parish and community halls and regaled in the States debating Chamber.
Principal among them today are the needs for affordable homes for our locally born talent, among other wider needs of the Island.
Only days ago, it was held that there are more people leaving Jersey than coming into it.
Certainly, the evidence is clear – there are so many hospitality outlets complaining about their ongoing difficulties to get local staff. Contractors are struggling too, and several have ceased trading, leaving sub-contractors out of pocket. Yet we still see grandiose developments springing up across the Island, none of which will service the needs of the lower-wage earners struggling in the cost-of-living crisis.
Ultimately, Jersey-born families are being broken up, as their offspring must leave the island of their schooling and parental support, due to the unaffordable housing and costs of living in Jersey. Only days ago, a minister pronounced that the cost of housing was due to the rising interest rates hikes – where has he been; where have his advisers been? Interest rates didn’t just appear yesterday – they have been rising since early last year and will probably continue to rise for a while yet. I am advised that only a week or so ago, the Royal Court sitting for the sale of properties saw – for its first time, to my knowledge – an empty Friday afternoon for property transactions. Even the highest interest rates in history, peaking at 18.63% in the 1980s, saw property transactions, so please don’t put a 1% interest hike responsible for the current housing prices or challenging circumstances.
But who is doing what – are our Constables and fellow States Members coalescing and demanding changes?
Certainly, a former Deputy of Trinity, Anne Pryke, commissioned ARC4 to inform the current and future need for housing in Jersey, a report due to have been delivered in June 2018 to assist the Parish of St Peter in the proposed development of Ville Du Manoir, but not delivered to the public till January the following year.
A minimum of 7,000 new homes required by 2030, according to the States consultants in their report – and that assumes inward migration stays at its then current level.
So what went wrong? Why are we facing a significant exodus of our home-educated and trained young families, all desperate for somewhere that they can call their own and at an affordable price?
Who knew better than ARC4, a company renowned for its knowledge of the UK housing market? Who better than professionals in all aspects of housing needs? Why was this, the 2018 St Peter potential-affordable-homes development, refused when the ARC4 report demonstrated the urgent and ongoing need?
The ‘good news’ is that if we stop all inward migration we will only need to find 2,000 new homes by 2030, but that does not include the current hopeful families desperate for a decent home of their own, where they are not at the threat of imminent eviction due to landlords selling their properties and where they can have confidence of their children staying at a nearby school and their education not suffering from having to move school.
Nearly ten years have passed since I, as the then Constable of St Peter, advised parishioners that it was my intention to deliver affordable homes in perpetuity for parishioners. Land was identified, the need for supplementation of services and a plethora of consultations and public meetings were held, as were consultations on known need and suitability of site and services.
Yet today, still we still await what was set out in the Objective Housing Needs Survey by ARC4; nothing of any substance has been delivered.
Several Housing Ministers have come and gone; subsequent reports have been delivered, yet the response of a freedom of information request states: ‘There have not been any substantive changes to the OAHNR.’
At the beginning of February the Constable of St Peter lodged a proposition that asks States Members to agree with an amendment to the Island Plan and ‘To task the Minister for the Environment to prepare and issue a Development Brief as supplementary planning guidance for the site’ known as Ville Du Manoir to be debated in the States in March this year. Four months on and it still hasn’t been debated, and the States are not sitting again till September.
The sad fact is that records show that only 206 affordable homes will be delivered in the ten years between 2010 and 2020, and that does not currently include the 65 homes proposed for Ville Du Manoir for our St Peter young families.
The real conundrum is how do we enable our Jersey families to stay in the island of their birth, enjoying affordable housing, because if we don’t, the vacuum that they leave in the workplace will have to be filled by immigrant labour, adding to an already overloaded housing demand.
The St Peter Affordable Homes scheme was four times over-subscribed, allowing only applicants with strong connections with the Parish of St Peter to be accepted on the waiting list, with 260 desperately hopeful of an affordable home in Jersey. Multiply that by the 12 parishes and that demonstrates the crushing need and that was in 2014. We still wait in hope.
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John Refault is a former Constable of Peter, company director and chairperson of two local charities, Headway Jersey and Abbeyfield Jersey.
