States Meeting Transcript - 18th March 2022

STATES OF JERSEY OFFICIAL REPORT FRIDAY, 18th MARCH 2022

PUBLIC BUSINESS - resumption .................................................................. 3

1. Island Plan 2022-25: Approval (P.36/2021) – ninety-first amendment: Affordable housing provision (P.36/2021 Amd.(91)) - as amended - resumption .................... 3

1.1 Senator K.L. Moore : ....................................................................... 3

1. Deputy M. Tadier of St. Brelade : .......................................................... 4
2. Deputy L.B.E. Ash of St. Clement : ........................................................ 5
3. Connétable D.W. Mezbourian of St. Lawrence : ........................................... 5
4. Deputy R. Labey of St. Helier : ............................................................ 6
5. Connétable J. Le Bailly of St. Mary : ...................................................... 6
6. Deputy K.F. Morel of St. Lawrence : ...................................................... 7
7. Connétable M.K. Jackson of St. Brelade : .................................................. 9
8. Connétable J.E. Le Maistre of Grouville : .................................................. 9
9. Connétable A.S. Crowcroft of St. Helier : .................................................. 9
10. Deputy G.C. Guida of St. Lawrence : .................................................. 11
11. Deputy R.J. Ward : ..................................................................... 12
12. Deputy J.H. Young of St. Brelade :.................................................... 13

2. Island Plan 2022-25: Approval (P.36/2021) – sixty-second amendment: Withdrawal of G392A, Grouville (P. 36/2021 Amd.(62))................................................. 20

2.1 The Deputy of Grouville : ................................................................. 20

1. Deputy J.H. Young: ...................................................................... 21
2. Deputy I. Gardiner of St. Helier : ......................................................... 22
3. The Connétable of Grouville : ............................................................ 22
4. Deputy S.M. Wickenden of St. Helier : ................................................... 24
5. Deputy J.A. Martin of St. Helier :......................................................... 25
6. The Connétable of St. Brelade : ........................................................... 26
7. The Deputy of Grouville : ................................................................. 26

3. Island Plan 2022-25: Approval (P.36/2021) – twelfth amendment: Removal of Field H1219 St. Helier (P.36/2021 Amd.(12))................................................... 28

3.1 The Connétable of St. Helier : ............................................................ 28

1. Deputy S.M. Ahier of St. Helier : ......................................................... 30
2. Deputy J.H. Young: ...................................................................... 31
3. Deputy I. Gardiner : ....................................................................... 32

LUNCHEON ADJOURNMENT PROPOSED ................................................... 34 LUNCHEON ADJOURNMENT .................................................................. 34

4. The Connétable of St. Helier : ............................................................ 34

4. Island Plan 2022-25: Approval (P.36/2021) - seventy-eighth amendment: Rezone Field H1219A for accessible homes (P.36/2021 Amd.(78)) .................................... 36

4.1 Deputy S.M. Ahier : ....................................................................... 36

1. Deputy D. Johnson of St. Mary : .......................................................... 37
2. Deputy R.J. Ward : ........................................................................ 37
3. Deputy J.A. Martin: ...................................................................... 38
4. Deputy J.H. Young: ...................................................................... 38
5. Deputy M. Tadier :........................................................................ 39
6. Deputy K.F. Morel : ....................................................................... 40
7. Deputy I. Gardiner : ....................................................................... 42
8. Deputy K.G. Pamplin of St. Saviour : .................................................... 43
9. Senator S.C. Ferguson: ................................................................... 44
10. Senator S.Y. Mézec : ................................................................... 44
11. Deputy R.J. Renouf of St. Ouen :...................................................... 45
12. Connétable R.A. Buchanan of St. Ouen :.............................................. 46
13. Senator S.W. Pallett: .................................................................. 47
14. Deputy M.R. Higgins: ................................................................. 48
15. Connétable K. Shenton-Stone of St. Martin :.......................................... 49
16. The Connétable of St. Helier : .......................................................... 49
17. Deputy S.M. Ahier : .................................................................... 50

5. Island Plan 2022-25: Approval (P.36/2021) - sixteenth amendment: Field MN410, St. Martin (P.36/2021 Amd.(16)) .............................................................. 54

5.1 Deputy S.G. Luce of St. Martin : .......................................................... 54

6. Island Plan 2022-25: Approval (P.36/2021) - second amendment: Removal of St. Saviour Fields (P.36/2021 Amd.(2)) ...................................................... 54

6.1 Deputy K.C. Lewis of St. Saviour : ....................................................... 55

1. Deputy K.G. Pamplin: .................................................................... 56
2. Connétable S.A. Le Sueur -Rennard of St. Saviour : ...................................... 57
3. The Connétable of St. Ouen :.............................................................. 59
4. Deputy G.C. Guida: ...................................................................... 59
5. Deputy J.H. Young: ...................................................................... 60
6. Deputy K.C. Lewis : ...................................................................... 62

ADJOURNMENT .................................................................................. 67

[9:31]

The Roll was called and the Dean led the Assembly in Prayer.

PUBLIC BUSINESS - resumption

1. Island Plan 2022-25: Approval (P.36/2021) – ninety-first amendment: Affordable housing provision (P.36/2021 Amd.(91)) - as amended - resumption

The Deputy Bailiff :

We now return to the debate on the 91st amendment, as amended. Does any Member wish to speak on the amendment, as amended?

1.1  Senator K.L. Moore :

Three years ago I asked this Assembly to rezone a field in the centre of the village of St. Peter for affordable housing. That would have provided 64 homes in the Ville du Manoir site, which Andium Homes were preparing and hoping to develop. Of course, 3 years may seem a relatively short period of time but, as I stated during speeches, at that time 3 years makes a vast difference in the life of a child. I sense that in debating this amendment, as it now stands, a number of Members still wish to take the amendment line by line or item by item. I would like to speak early this morning and urge the Minister to take the amendment as a whole and ask Members to support it as a whole because Members are here to represent the people. Some Members, and I believe one political party, takes the view that everyone in the Island has a roof over their heads so we need not worry about delivering more affordable housing under this bridging Island Plan. However, I would like to remind them of the homelessness strategy. That clearly sets out the need to deliver more affordable housing, and it sets out also the impact that homelessness is having on people in the Island today. While they may have a roof over their heads and somewhere to sleep at night they do not enjoy consistency or even security of tenure because they might be sofa-surfing or facing eviction because the property that they are renting is being sold. People who leave prison often go to either Sanctuary House or they find themselves sleeping in hotels or guesthouses. That cannot be the kind of housing that we hope for, for Members of the public of Jersey. We are all aware of the numbers of people who are on the list seeking housing with Andium. There is a significant waiting list and we all know and have constituents who are experiencing troubles because of the time that they are spending waiting for better quality housing. I can also remind Members of the words of children themselves that are provided to us by the Children's Commissioner in her report Life on the Rock. If I could quote one young girl aged 10. It says: "I think houses and flats are really expensive in Jersey and sometimes mums and dads do not earn enough money to afford a nice house for them and their children to live in. Sometimes landlords have nice big houses but will not let children live in them." We all know that housing has been an issue. We all know that there are huge numbers of people who would like to be able to afford housing of a better quality than the housing that they are currently experiencing. This amendment is about delivering a greater number of affordable homes for Islanders and those homes will be delivered through Andium and therefore, because they are affordable housing sites, they will be seeking a lower price to many other housing sites for development. That must be really at the forefront of Members' minds because I sensed yesterday that a lot of Members do not want to enrich people who might sell their land but if we vote against this amendment then we will be forcing more and more people to deliver housing through the private sector, through private development, and therefore there is less restraint on the price of land through those developments. Of course, they will also be focused more on flats and homes without gardens, which, in my view, would be inferior for our children. If Members have a problem with people making money out of the sale of land then I would urge them to address that sole issue by considering a property tax or something, bringing a proposition to the Assembly that would meet that issue that they have with the exchange of land and making it available for housing. Let us put the people of Jersey first. Let us put what each and every one of us know about our constituents and the experiences that they are having in the housing market

and the rental market, and support the Minister in his bid to create more affordable homes for Islanders over the coming years.

Deputy R.J. Ward :

May I raise the défaut on Deputy Tadier please?

The Deputy Bailiff :

Are Members content to raise the défaut? Yes, the défaut is raised.

1. Deputy M. Tadier of St. Brelade :

I think when Members stand up to talk about housing being one of the most important issues facing our Island that would be a bit more credible if we did not have an Assembly which is perceived by outsiders to be full of the landlord class who every time, and it has been so many occasions now, that simple propositions come to this Assembly to ask for things like a landlord registration scheme, like minimum standards so you know that what you are living in meets certain standards, and those standards are regulated and they are inspected.

[9:45]

It is not just left to be a reactive system when people are paying extremely high rents in the Island and they are not guaranteed to get a minimum standard in return. If it was not for the fact that those kind of simple things were batted back on every occasion, sometimes by very small minorities, I think some Members could speak with a bit more authority and perhaps they would be believed more by the public when they stand up and say: "We need to sort out the housing crisis in Jersey." One might be tempted to say that of course what we are debating here today is not rental properties, it is about being able to afford to buy your own home in an affordable way. But what I would say is that you have to look at this - we have to look at his - holistically because they are all part of the same picture. I would say that we simply do not have the information .. the census information has been mentioned already but we could and should have detailed information about the housing situation in Jersey by knowing who owns what. I think we know it in terms of fields. We do not know it in terms of property. I go back to the point that I was told many years ago by somebody working in Social Security who administers income support, and he was not saying the Island is full of feckless, poor people who are benefit scroungers who are too lazy to work. He is saying the Island is full of people who work very hard, who often work 2 jobs between them, and remember in the past just having one person in your family working a full-time job, another perhaps raising the children. I know that is a very classical and quaint notion. That was more than sufficient to be able to buy your own home back 40 or 50 years ago. I know that because my parents did it. They came from a modest background. There was a States loan system there. You were given a plot of land where you found your own builder and there were some plans which you built, and of course you probably paid that off for most, if not all, of your working life. These are ordinary people. We have got to a situation today when you have professional couples who are in, I would call them good jobs, and I do not mean that in any kind of derogatory way; all jobs are good and noble I believe. But we have people who would have been in past classed .. you have teachers, you have all sorts of professionals, civil servants, both of whom are working, possibly even doing second jobs and they are applying for affordable housing schemes that have yet to be built. Okay, Members will be saying back to me: "Why are you not supporting the rezoning?" Because that is not the problem. We have always done this. We have always relied on the broken arguments of supply and demand. That simply is not working because we are not taking the expense out of the land in the first place. When we rezone these places, these fields, they are expensive from day one. If we already own land that we have we do not need to make the same profit as a States, as the Island's Government, but we are setting a completely wrong example here. We should be making homes affordable in perpetuity. Not saying that you can own part of an unaffordable home, which is what we are effectively promising, is this

the best we can do as an Island? When I have those private conversations with other Members in the coffee room and I explain that we have a situation where everybody in Jersey lives somewhere, the problem is we do not have a proper distribution of the housing. We have people in the Island, going back to my contact at Social Security, saying: "Look, you have a system where you have somebody who owns 100 properties in the Island, 100 flats potentially, and we are paying his or her mortgages." In fact, he probably owns so many of them outright, you are not giving money to the poor, you are giving money to the rich through this system. When somebody stands up and says: "If you do not like it you should lodge your own proposition", indeed I have lodged my own proposition, the party has lodged a proposition - it is not going to solve all the issues - and it is to do with empty properties in the Island. This was not something that I identified. I look over to my left to the Deputy of St. Mary , he was the chair of the Environment and Housing Scrutiny Panel at the time. I sat on that with him. Deputy Martin who is now the Minister for Social Security, who is unfortunately - it is not her fault - still having to dole out lots of income support to the rich in the Island so that they can get even richer, this is the reality of what we have here. This has sat on the shelf for 7 years not being actioned. We need to get a system so that if somebody brings a proposition to rehouse greenhouse sites, greenfield sites, it should not be down to the lottery of if you happen to have a field which fits the bill, if you happen to know a States Member who is willing to bring it to the Assembly for you, when other people have to go through the planning process and ultimately take their chances on the benefits of that. After that, of course, there is no land transaction tax when it is sold and people might say: "But you voted against the land transaction tax the last time it came." Of course, because it was a terrible way that it was formulated. It looked to tax the area of the land, not the uplift. Until we get into a position where we can have a joined-up government which approaches that, in a joined-up way, so that you have fair outcomes and that you have sustainable outcomes in our Island, I am not going to accept this false dichotomy which says you either have to concrete over all of your green fields, because that is the direction that we are going in, losing the character, so that some people can become very wealthy and other people are not ultimately going to have affordable homes. They are still going to be in a hand-to-mouth existence. If they lost one of their jobs they would be in dire straits. We all know that. What is the expression, Deputy Ward ? You are only ever 2 or 3 pay packets away from homelessness, and that is what we see also in the Island. I am afraid I cannot accept this false proposition that we are being presented with. There has got to be a better way. Unfortunately, we are not going to get it from this Government, despite the fact that I think we have had some very good work and effort from our outgoing Minister for the Environment and his team.

2. Deputy L.B.E. Ash of St. Clement :

It is probably more of a plea than a speech. Over the last 4 days people have had plenty of opportunity to stand up and explain why we need more houses, and indeed they have, and they have explained why we have a housing crisis and we have seen that, and we have all seen there is a tremendous need for housing. Can we now just concentrate on why field XYZ or 123 is acceptable and if not, why not? I mean Members are obviously free to do whatever they wish but it would be much better if everybody could just stick to the topic at hand rather than making political speeches, but that is my view. But it is a plea.

3. Connétable D.W. Mezbourian of St. Lawrence :

I thought we all made political speeches in this Chamber. On page 194 of the draft bridging Island Plan, we are able to read about future affordable housing provision. The first sentence says: "This Island Plan will meet the need to provide affordable homes through the use of government-owned land." I think that is lacking in what we have before us. I would like the Minister to address that when he sums up. The other point I would like to ask the Minister, in fact I will ask the Minister to address, is to give us a definition of what affordable housing is. What it means. Because we are discussing the rezoning of agricultural land for the provision of affordable homes, and I may have missed it when the Minister spoke to this initially, but I am pretty sure he has not told us what the definition is. My views were expressed yesterday about the rezoning of agricultural land, however I am open to persuasion potentially if the Minister explains why there is nothing here that seeks to provide affordable homes through the use of Government land and I look forward to hearing his definition of what affordable housing provision means.

4. Deputy R. Labey of St. Helier :

I was just going to declare an interest at this point because the farmer of field 558, which is between Rue des Sapins and La Verte Rue, is farmed by my brother who is a potato grower. I do not have any financial interest in his business but obviously I will not be voting on this amendment. I just feel I should point out to the Assembly that the grower of this field, tenant, has not been consulted by anybody throughout the entire process on his views on this field being lost to agriculture. His view is this: he cannot understand why St. Peter want to extend its village across the road from the George De Carteret into the best land in St. Peter without going first behind the pub and down towards Rue du Bocage and the airport, where there is some of the least productive land in St. Peter and in the Island and that is the direction of travel, he believes, the village should be taking. I said from the beginning, from the in-committee debate I was unequivocal on the Island Plan, that if we were to take green fields they should be the least productive, the least loss to agriculture. I have repeated that, after becoming the Minister for Housing and Communities, in the press and on the floor of this Assembly and in briefings and meetings. What we are too often being asked to do in this plan, process, and I think it is the undoing of this section, is so many of the fields we are being asked to rezone are categorised by the Jersey Farmers' Union as for last resort rezoning only but we are not taking them as a last resort, we are taking them as a first resort, and I will leave that there. If I can help with the definition of affordable housing; it is published. I will run through it very, very quickly: affordable housing on the Homebuy Gateway to buy is houses that are at least 10 per cent below an agreed market value, with a further 25 per cent deferred payment. The buy-out would be buying your property at 65 per cent or less of the agreed market value, which is set independently. There are also other schemes to assist with the purchase of homes, which include a deposit scheme, which means you can buy off plan with maybe a £2,000 deposit and pay the rest of the deposit in instalments during the build period. That is an assisted purchase product to make homes affordable for people and there are other shared equity schemes in S.o.J.D.C. (States of Jersey Development Company) and also in the Parishes. The formula for affordable right-sizing homes has still to be worked out. S.o.J.D.C. are working on finalising their formula for it. We are finalising our formula for it. It is complex because houses are being released and we have to work out the price bracket and make it viable, and that is complex but we are doing it as I speak. As I say, I cannot vote on this because of my connection to my brother who farms 558, but I am grateful for being allowed to make a representation on his behalf.

5. Connétable J. Le Bailly of St. Mary :

I and many hopeful buyers hate the term "affordable homes". Homes at £500,000 are not affordable as first-time buyer homes, even with subsidies, which are taxpayers' costs. Real affordable housing can be produced for half the current price, hopefully at £250,000 per house. How? Change the method of build. If we build flat pack or modular we can achieve that. The benefits would be units that would be constructed off-Island, which means that we do not have to bring in tradespeople for that process. The simple fact is we do not have enough local tradespeople to embark on a building programme anyway. Local tradespeople are committed to providing their services to the local population, who very often have to wait months. We have a sand supply problem, a quarry aggregate supply problem.

[10:00]

We do not need to build in concrete for first-time buyer housing. I do not envisage a total change in build but we should seek alternatives. The northern hemisphere are building timber flatpack housing due to permafrost, so factory-produced housing is the norm. The biggest advantage is cost; it is much cheaper. We need to provide homes. We need to provide real affordable homes. We need to do that now. We need to do that if you want to benefit the desperate people who should not have the opportunity denied to them from owning their first home. We can achieve this, it is down to your vote.

6. Deputy K.F. Morel of St. Lawrence :

This is an incredibly difficult vote, there is no question about it and, to be honest, as we were approaching this yesterday I was feeling quite sick to my stomach as I realised that this is the meat of, in many ways, the Island Plan debate and it really does bring me in conflict with myself. I am a strong supporter of agriculture in the Island. I think it is really very important for a number of reasons, all the way from food security and the element that it can help - it can never be all because we have far too many people on this Island - maintain the level of food supply from within the Island through to the nature of the Island and the character of the Island that agriculture gives us. As I have said in this Assembly before, the landscapes we see and enjoy because we do like them are there because of agriculture. They are not natural landscapes. It always has to be said a field is not a natural landscape. A field is a manmade landscape but it is one that we almost all, I suggest, enjoy. But at the same time I also accept and completely agree that there is a housing crisis in this Island and that people do need homes, so I have to balance those 2 issues. My problem with this entire Island Plan debate really, and this particular part of it does stem from the process, yesterday I apologised to the Minister and officers as I said that the trouble is I do not trust the process that they have gone through and another Minister said it is 18 months of work and you still do not trust it. The trouble is it is quality not quantity of work that counts. We have heard today from the Connétable of St. Lawrence , we have also heard from Deputy Labey . But, first of all, States-owned land, the Connétable is absolutely correct. I know that Andium Homes are still waiting for the Government to make decisions about whether they will hand States-owned land to Andium or not. This is not Andium saying: "We want to start building on it today, we need to know today about today." They are just saying: "Will you tell us whether in 2023, 2025 you will be handing over that plot of land to us? Because if you tell us now we can start planning what we will do with that land." But the States have not, the Government has not; to be honest it is not the States, it is the Government. The Government has not done that and so Andium is still waiting. I know very well that regardless of the 18 months of hard work that there is States-owned land that is unallocated. I know when I talk to parishioners that they say to me: "But why are they going for the green fields first when we know that there is States-owned land that has absolutely not been allocated?" That is a real problem and it is things like that which make me question the process and not trust the process. Similarly, Deputy Tadier is absolutely right on the unused properties element. The number of speeches that I have heard, and Deputy Tadier is referring to times also before I was a States Member, so there would clearly have been dozens of speeches on this issue. People have raised it time and time and time again and yet Governments, successive Governments, have done nothing. It is not an easy subject; that is why work should have started 10 years ago. They have done nothing to try and encourage people to move unused properties into use. These are the problems that I find before me as I sit here and look at this amendment and think, do I support it or not? Because this amendment is a lot of high-quality agricultural land, as Deputy Labey has said, and that is a massive issue. Because I know when I speak to farmers that one of the things that is really hurting the industry is the chipping away at the fields in Jersey; as more and more are taken it makes it harder and harder to rotate crops. We say to farmers: "We want you to be more environmentally friendly, we want you not to be monoculture, we want you to rotate your fields." It is really hard to rotate fields when there are fewer and fewer fields to rotate in. It is really difficult and that is happening across the Island. Yesterday Deputy Le Hegarat was quite right when she said: "When it comes to dairy farms the fields where you put your cows have to be relatively close to the farm and the milking sheds where you take them." You cannot take cows from St. Catherine's to St. Brelade for milking; that is not possible, they have to be quite close by. These are the issues that I

come across and if I trusted the process I would find it so much easier to vote for this. But, unfortunately, and this happened way back in Scrutiny, initially the Minister came to Scrutiny and said: "COVID is hitting, this is going to affect the Island Plan. We are going to move the Island Plan until after the elections." That seemed to be the right thing to do because then the Island Plan could be done in a proper amount of time. Suddenly it is about 2 or 3 months later the Minister appeared before Scrutiny again and said: "We have changed our minds, we are going to rush through a bridging Island Plan which was for 3 years." I was quite astounded. I was like, okay, not only will you be making us vote on things like this right before an election, which, as people have said, it becomes an issue then, makes it harder to have a debate which has not got the electoral kind of pressures behind you when you are voting, for all States Members, but it means that the work that is going to be done is going to be done very quickly. When I look at things like other elements on this, such as Le Gigoulande Quarry, in my view shoddily. That is the problem, the Minister has given us so little to go on to have trust in that process. It does not feel right, all the way through to things like the plan B sites appearing out of nowhere. Deputy Le Hegarat was completely right yesterday when she said: "The plan B appeared and States Members were still so focused on dealing with everything under the plan A sites and getting on with all their other work, we were extremely distracted; suddenly they appeared from nowhere." Also, a process where States Members can just throw in their own thoughts, whether it is because it is a friend's field that they wanted to put in or something else, they just throw them in and bypass half the process to get there. I am struggling, I want to vote for homes for Islanders but I also want to vote for homes for Islanders when I have a process that I can trust it and I can believe in that we are going to green fields as that last resort. I am very pleased in this amendment that there is at least one glasshouse site on there, that I am pleased with; that is good. But, again, I know of glasshouse sites in my Parish, St. Lawrence , that are sitting there derelict for decades. I do not understand why the Minister has not personally gone up to those people and said: "You have got this glasshouse site, it is derelict, would you consider using it?" At the end of the day I am very likely to fall down on the side of housing because people are people and they need homes. We are now in a situation where the price of housing has gone through the roof. The trouble though is that the price of housing has accelerated for a number of reasons, and supply is not the only reason. They have accelerated because interest rates have been so extraordinarily low for so long. They have accelerated because COVID means that people have built up savings in their pocket and by people I mean the people who do not necessarily need a home, they already have a home but they have savings because through COVID they were not spending. They think Island interest rates are low in the bank: "I tell you what, I will invest in a property." Basically, we are in an asset bubble and 600 homes is not going to affect that asset bubble very much at all in terms of, yes, those actual homes will be more affordable than open market homes, I accept that. But the effect they will have on the wider market I would say is going to be negligible, especially because we know it is going to take 3 or 4 years to deliver these homes in the main. In fact, I would be shocked if come the end of this Island Plan in 2025 if 600 homes have been built; I will be shocked. I just want to say one thing to the Connétable of St. Mary . While the Connétable of St. Mary is right that currently £850,000 for a regular kind of 3-bedroom home is entirely unaffordable, the affordability is not in the high cost price, the affordability is always in can you afford the mortgage repayments? That is where the affordability lies. To some extent some early buyers, for whatever reason, their jobs allow them to pay those mortgage payments. It is difficult, it is shocking when you say £850,000 for a 3-bedroom family home and in the main the mortgage repayments on that are not affordable, I accept that entirely. But even with the 35 per cent off it is the mortgage repayments that makes something affordable rather than the ultimate ticket price, so to speak. Senator Moore started by saying that she asked the Minister to take this en bloc and I understand that. Like I say, I am going to err on the side of housing, I believe, in this debate. But one thing I would say to the Minister is I am not the only person in this Assembly who does not trust the process, who feels that the process has not looked at the obvious things first. For that reason, if he wants to maintain any element of trust, for those people who are concerned about it, I would say if people want it taken item by item then I would do that

because that will at least give people the sense of trust that they have been listened to and being able to have their say on individual items. Myself, it probably will not make much difference the way I vote. But I do hope the Minister listens to me because I think Ministers made some fundamental errors throughout this Island Plan process and the fact that many of us are sitting here today, I believe, feeling very similar to me in not trusting that process, despite 18 months of hard work, does make it very difficult today. I do not think the Minister has helped us a lot in making this any easier.

7. Connétable M.K. Jackson of St. Brelade :

I am really struggling to support the desecration of these good agricultural fields and to for ever take them out of the industry. The previous speaker mentioned the element of food security rising to the fore, particularly now with the situation in Europe, I think it is something we cannot ignore and is high in my mind. Without wishing to repeat what others have eloquently said earlier, we must focus more on brownfield sites and enhance existing developments to achieve the numbers of additional housing units that we so desperately require. We need to make greater effort and not simply utilise the easy route of using greenfield sites, it can only be to the long-term detriment of future generations and our society as a whole. Deputy Labey 's remarks were so poignant with regard to using good quality land, and I ask Members to please take note of the comments of growers. The uplift in value is of course always an underlying factor for any landowner and I cannot blame them for wishing to take advantage of their situation. I have a wry smile when I have heard previous speakers saying: "Yes, the owner is in favour of this field being approved or that field being approved." Of course, they are and I give more credit to those who do not agree to the sale of their good agricultural land for development.

[10:15]

It is that not everyone can be as philanthropic and give land for housing, although albeit I am aware that some have made a contribution. In conclusion, we must look further than the ends of our noses and seek better ways of satisfying the current housing need.

8. Connétable J.E. Le Maistre of Grouville :

A number of references have been made to the Farmers' Union and their comments and I think there is some misunderstanding. They categorised the land into 4 levels; definitely no development, last resort for agriculture, which most of these fields come up, less important for agriculture and not currently used for agriculture. I think people are misunderstanding, and particularly the Constable of St. Helier yesterday, he said because one of the fields that we were discussing was categorised by the Farmers' Union is less important for agriculture. It does not mean that they do not want to keep it. It does not mean to say it is not important, it is just less important than the other 2 categories. The Constable of St. Helier said: "Well, if they do not want to we will have it in trees." Not a bad idea but they do want it. Those fields are in agriculture, otherwise they would be in the category 4. Because they are in agriculture somebody is making a profit out of that and it is part of their business. I have really great difficulty in supporting these fields for development, as pretty much all of them are last resort for agriculture, and I think that says it all. To suggest that because something is less important for agriculture means that it should be taken away is simply not the case. I think the Farmers' Union are just being pragmatic and saying: "If they are going to take some of our land let us make sure they take the one that we are making the least profit out of." I think that explains that to Members.

9. Connétable A.S. Crowcroft of St. Helier :

I am pleased to follow the Constable of Grouville . I hope I can correct the misunderstanding I may have given to the Assembly yesterday when I talked about fields going into other uses if they were not required for agriculture. I absolutely agree with him that fields of last resort, as they have been described, should not be lost. What I was saying really was that - and this is particularly relevant to

St. Helier and the fringes of St. Helier - is if a case cannot be made for their preservation for agriculture then there are much better things to do with the fields than building on them. I think I referred to the inspectors having lifted the Sword of Damocles from the 3 fields on St. John 's Road on account of their organic farming. The arguments I made to the inspectors was that whether or not these are important for agriculture, they are far too important to put under concrete. I hope that I am absolutely on the same side as the Constable of Grouville when it comes to the valuing of fields. In fact one of the things that I have always enjoyed about the way Jersey is organised is that every field has a number, every field counts. That is not something you can say in lots of parts of the world. I remember a former Constable of Trinity , he used to delight us in the meetings of the Comité des Connétable because every time we referred to a field and it did not have to be in his Parish, he could tell you who owned it and he could go back several generations if he was not stopped. The fields are really important to us and it is absolutely right that Members are concerned. I have moved my position since the last debate on the Island Plan. I remember vehemently opposing the loss of a beautiful and productive agricultural field on the other side of the Trinity Arms pub, which was gifted to the Parish by a parishioner of Trinity who wanted Parish homes to be built there. It was a fantastic build with views right down from the high point of the Island towards the south coast. I thought it was a terrible decision. I have moved my position and I can see that the Trinity , the village of Trinity , the Parish heart has benefited from having young families with Trinity connections moving into that estate. It is an estate in the countryside but I can see that it has benefited the village. The pub has benefited, the shop is doing well, I assume the church is doing well, though as I am not a churchgoer I could not vouch for that. Basically, my position now is that if the Parishes want to protect their village centres, their Parish hearts, they want to welcome parishioners back into the heart of the Parish, then I should support the loss of a few fields in the heart of the villages, in the heart of the Parish centres. I believe that is pretty much mainstream philosophy as far as the Island Plan goes. I do not think I am saying anything very radical. I suppose what is radical is that I have shifted from being completely against the loss of any green fields to saying I think you can argue that some can be lost. But of course, there is this really important point and several speakers have already referred to it, about brown field sites. The whole point about last resort from the Jersey Farmers' Union is that it is not the last resort while there are brownfield sites sitting unused by Government. Every day I walk to work past a derelict terraced house in Val Plaisant. Nobody lives there, as far as I know, nobody has for years. There is one on old Trinity Hill which has been derelict for as long as I have been a States Member. That is a quarter of a century this house has sat derelict and I think that is wrong. I share the Reform Party's concern, nothing appears to have been done about derelict buildings. We are not talking about buildings where the owner has a legitimate right to keep it empty, we are talking about buildings where the owner simply cannot be bothered or in some cases simply cannot be traced. I certainly would be willing, if Government approached the Parishes, to take a long hard look at the Rates Law at least to see, what can we do using the Rates Law to turn the screw on owners who are not putting these properties to better use? It is very hard for me as I walk past properties every day to think that a good agricultural field should be built on; I cannot see the logic. If I can give another example, and I have referred to this before, in Don Road, Royal Crescent as it is called - and that of course makes one think of Bath and the tremendous presence of buildings in Bath - there is a lovely crescent of buildings and of course it has got its main section missing. That was the Theatre Royal which was built in 1828, the opening production was "A New Way to Pay Old Debts", which I thought was rather appropriate. It burnt down in 1863 and I think there was subsequently a building on the site. But, as Members will know now, when they drive up Don Road it is a car park; it is a surface car park. I would contend that not only does it need to be replaced for aesthetic reasons because it is not a Royal Crescent while it has got the central building missing but it needs to be replaced, rather than building on green fields. You could put the parking in a basement and you could build 4, 5, maybe 6 storeys. It needs to be a big building, an imposing building because it is the centrepiece of the crescent. For me the failure of Government to tackle the site of the Theatre Royal is another reason why I am unlikely to support building on green fields and particularly green

fields in St. Helier , but I will come on to that when I propose my amendment. I think there is a real problem here, and it may be reported by the media, it is not that this Assembly does not care about the Jersey people who need homes, it is not that we do not care about rampant house price inflation, it is that we do not want to see the essential character of Jersey that we do struggle to and fight to preserve. We do not want to see that lost because Government has not taken enough trouble to get those brownfield sites into use.

The Connétable of Grouville : A point of order, Sir.

The Deputy Bailiff :

Yes.

The Connétable of Grouville :

Yes, I would just like to apologise to the Constable of St. Helier . I did not imply for one moment that he does not appreciate the countryside and agriculture. I was merely trying to point out that less important for agriculture does not mean it is up for grabs.

10. Deputy G.C. Guida of St. Lawrence :

I will try to answer a few of the questions that have been around and also a few of the misconceptions. The first one of course is Andium Homes where there will be a debate on that and a massive misconception, later on where I will be able to talk about actual figures. We have mentioned the importance of green fields and agriculture and I think it would be very difficult not to accept that. Agriculture in Jersey and open fields are extremely, extremely important; they are paramount. One of the problems of course is that if you build on them, you just cannot unbuild; it is a for ever decision. There is one exception of course, the one thing that you can take away from building and going back to a greenfield is a greenhouse. There is a reversal to the process; it has happened many times. It is a possibility, it is just expensive but that is possible. The one thing that is completely in a mess is with security. Jersey - and we have had the experience during the war - where quite a bit more of the Island was dedicated to agriculture, can feed about 25,000 people. We would have to make a massive population adjustment before we could even dream of coming anywhere near for security in Jersey. We will need to import 92 per cent, I think it is today, to 75 per cent in the best of cases, percentage of food supply from elsewhere anyway. There are many, many good reasons for keeping fields but food security is nowhere near one of them. The one thing I would really like to talk about is this weird image of the people in need of more housing. It seems that for some reason in this Assembly the single person, 30 years old, just come out of their parents' home, needs a single bedroom or at the maximum 2-bedroom apartment in town to buy, is the image that we all have in our heads of all those people that desperately need homes. I am sorry, it really, really is not. It is a broad spectrum of needs. It is a very, very large number of different needs. There are 20 year-old single people that need to rent somewhere because their parents are a little fed up with them living at home; they need to rent somewhere. To rent something you need somebody to be a landlord. It can be a large corporation like Andium or it can be private individuals but you need somebody to provide this home for rent. You have 40 years old with 2 teenager kids and a dog who also need a home. They are not going to live in a one-bedroom apartment, they are not going to live in a 2-bedroom apartment, they need a home. They need a 4-bedroom house with a garden and those are the ones that are the most in demand in Jersey. Those are the ones that now demand £1 million to be built, which is mind- boggling because not many families, 2 people, 2 kids growing up needing to be educated, needing cars to be purchased, needing holidays to be purchased, those are people who really have difficulty finding £1 million even on a mortgage to buy a home. This is the market that we must break the most. Single-bedroom apartments, we will make a 15-storey building and we can have hundreds of them, very cheap but 4-bedroom homes with a garden, we do not have any of those; now they are

massively missing in Jersey. I am sorry, if there is any excuse for building on a greenfield, which I agree is sacred in Jersey, it is this one. It is the fact that the homes that are the most in demand are 4-bedroom, semi-detached or detached with a small garden. Having lived in those for a number of years that is your for ever home. When you reach that you are happy, there is nothing else that you need. It is the target for every family in the Island. The only way to build more, the absolutely only way to build more is through this, is through amendment 91. We have already taken about 134 out of the equation because about 500 people will not live the dream and we just cannot take away the remainder.

11. Deputy R.J. Ward :

I do not know where to start because there is so much that I think is to be mentioned in this. I will say the Constable of St. Lawrence is absolutely correct, we do make political speeches because we have got jobs as politicians. I say that to Deputy Ash and I think there is a very subtle approach here, which is let us just talk about individuals, there is no talk about any principles whatsoever. I think what we need to talk about are the principles behind these things. I have come to this debate and my party and I will mention that because it is important to me, it is saying that we are not going to just en masse agree greenfield sites because it is not the right thing to do. There are reasons for that and there are reasons for not just en masse agree greenhouse sites, which, by the way, can at the moment already be put forward.

[10:30]

That is simple, we have not dealt with the other issues first. I am so pleased to see the Constable of St. Helier mention us in a positive light for once in terms of unoccupied homes, and perhaps that is the word "property" because they are not being used for homes. There are so many that could be developed before we move into other areas. But there are a couple of things I want to mention, first of all, is this notion of affordable homes and I wonder whether I can ask anyone who is suggesting a field for affordable homes to then state what form of affordable homes that it is going to be. Are you talking about going through the Housing Gateway? Are you talking about going through one of the Parish schemes? Are you talking about going through one of the plethora of schemes mentioned vaguely and briefly by the Minister for Housing and Communities? Are you talking about the schemes that I have been looking up here, the assisted purchase scheme, which I have got to say is an absolute mountain to climb if you want to try and get one of those homes as an assisted purchase? Because there are so many loopholes to step through and then you are going to own only - you are not going to own, the bank is going to own - a relatively small proportion of that and you are going to be mortgaged up to the hilt, probably paying for the deposit over the long term as well. We are putting our young people and our young families into a position where financially they are genuinely at risk of any changes that happen economically, any increases in prices, et cetera. We are putting people at risk; is that really affordable? I want to mention something that we are going to come to later on, and I asked for a debate on this rather than it just being accepted. I will say, unfortunately, the Minister for the Environment has just left the room for a moment and I completely understand because he has been working very hard in the last few days and probably needs a bit of a break, that is fair enough, perhaps a comfort break. I have asked for a debate on amendment 81, which is the removal of passive house standards for affordable homes and major developments outside the built- up area. One of the things that we have to do is think long term with housing. We have to think about 20, 30, 40 years. Building with those standards mean that those homes are cheaper and more efficient to run for a long, long time. But what the Minister has accepted, he says: "No, let us just remove those for outside of town but we will still call them affordable homes." Over the long time those homes are less and less affordable because they are more and more expensive to run and that is a huge error. It is one of the reasons that I am not going to fall for the affordable housing label that is put on all of those fields. I say to Members look carefully because at the top of this amendment we are looking at now, it says "affordable housing". What affordable housing? Is it in the long term?

Is it in the long term we are going to have the standards for those people to stay in? That is one of the issues I think we do have to address very accurately. I am increasingly seeing our bridging Island Plan and the Island Plan that we have as, effectively, just the developers' charter. The developers are the ones with the power here, with the power over housing and there may be people who have experience of being a developer in this Assembly, we see no problem with that. But for somebody who represents the centre of St. Helier where so much development is going on, I see a serious problem with that and I see a serious problem with the States of Jersey Development Corporation effectively being the States developer with, I think, the wrong priorities at times. That has nothing to do with the people who work there in terms of whether they are right or wrong, it is to do with the drive and the leadership from Government, which we are not getting on housing, as Deputy Tadier mentioned. I am in a situation where there is so much wrong here. It is really difficult to know what to say. What we are not talking about here is the security that comes with a home. Our rental market is broken, it is entirely broken. Rental is unaffordable. So many people are paying somebody else's mortgage plus some and they do not have the chance to have their own home with that level of security that they need. They have short-term tenancies, they can be out, when somebody says in fact he is selling up to a property developer you will have to get out soon in a month or so. We have given no security of tenure in this Assembly. We do not have a licensing law, we do not have a system of registration, we have just let that go. This Assembly voted against that, they voted for it and then voted against it because it was lobbied, effectively. Now we are talking about affordable housing sites and let us just build on green fields all over the Island, before we looked at how many are empty, before we look at other sites that are owned by the Government and the States and let us just carry on and do that. The headline and I say to those in the media please look at your headlines and look at your analysis of the situation because you are simplifying this analysis and people are not getting a true argument and picture of what is going on in this Island. You have a responsibility as political media to report appropriately and effectively and with detail. This is a complex argument about population, about housing and about affordability and this plan is not looking at that and this amendment is not looking at that. Let us just chuck a few fields in and everything will be solved. It will not. That is the issue we have got with this bridging Island Plan, there are some good parts to it I am sure and I recognise the fabulous work done by the officers. I mention Natasha, who is one of the officers there because I said I would, and she has done phenomenal work with her colleague as well, who is sat out there, keeping track of this all of the time. But, unfortunately, the broken system

- I am looking at Deputy Tadier and I understand where he is coming from - it is so difficult to verbalise this. I will use an analogy of a house, we are building houses on foundations that are failing us, on a theoretical foundation and principles that are simply not working. Then lo and behold we come back in a few years' time with this bridging Island Plan and say: "The houses are not working the way we thought they would because the foundations are crumbling." That is exactly right, the free market has led us to a position that is not working on this Island because it is a fixed market. It is a fixed market because it was talking about an essential need for everybody on this Island. Unless Government steps in and takes some control over this situation it will not work. This bridging Island Plan does not do that. These few fields are extra to build some failed models on do not do that. We are not going to get a model village, we are going to end up with unaffordable housing by the back door if we are not careful. I would just say to people, please, as we go through these, let us look really carefully at it. If you are going to talk about a field for affordable housing in the next few debates, please define to me what form of affordable housing you are going to be talking about. I may need more logic than is available at the time but this is not working for me and I have real concerns over this.

The Deputy Bailiff :

Thank you, Deputy . Does any other Member wish to speak on this amendment? If not, I call upon the Minister to reply.

12. Deputy J.H. Young of St. Brelade :

I kind of sensed we were going to stop at that point. I think the debate has been as difficult and as, frankly I will be honest, unpleasant as we all expected. I think I could be doing so many things, having been in this place, having to bring forward proposals, proposals where I know in my heart we had no choice. I had no choice to put to you, I said that at the start. I would have not wanted to get here. Yes, for the record I wanted population on it, we did not get that. For the record I wanted Government intervention, the Government to buy brownfield sites in town, develop them, develop them for low/medium rise, for family homes in the urban areas; I wanted that, I failed. Why? Because we are still locked into a I suppose it is in our D.N.A. (deoxyribonucleic acid) that where we have become now to rely completely on market mechanisms to deliver us homes. Given it is a small Island and how we are and the pressures there has to be intervention. The message in the future is, please, the next Government rethink strategy, rethink strategy. As years ago I can remember back in the 1980s when I was civil servant, let me tell you, in those days the Island Development Committee, the Planning Committee of the day, they had a land vote, they had £100 million of capital to spend in the 1980s. They made the decisions and what they made sure is that every decision on planning was integrated into the way we manage States-owned land; that was all thrown away in the 2000s, gone. We can rely on the private sector, we do not have to intervene, we will use the market, that is what was said and we have seen the end results of it. If you want to look back and see the benefits of what we have got just look around town, La Coie, Ritz, all over, all over town. All over intervention was made. We have decent homes for people but now what are we relying on? We are relying on high rise. We have got a system where the dots are not joining up; no question. But obviously what my role and the job has had to be is try and make the best job I can within that system. Some people may say, why did you bother? Why have the officers spent all this time, why bother? Let us put it all off. Because we have allowed our problems to become so acute - so acute - we have to make improvements. What we do we bring a plan and it has got the numbers in it, 1,600-odd affordable homes, okay, is an argument, and I will deal with that in a minute about what is affordable. There are about 600 of those already coming from States-owned sites anyway. What are they? Probably social rent and others. What we proposed, where are we going to make the balance up? We will make half the balance up, we say, from green fields that we do not want to lose. I hate it. Do you know what, I empathise with Deputy Morel ? I felt sick in the stomach having to do these things. I know, when I am not in this Assembly anymore, people will say: "Look at that field, we lost it for that John Young, he was the Minister for the Environment", this is what they will do; they will. But some people will say: "Why did you not just leave it to somebody else?" That would have been not the responsible thing to do. Bring it here and make the choices. The 600 now is gone; it is gone now. We have started the process, 600 were on the table. Yesterday we took 131 off the table, they have gone. I think there has been criticism about units and I was like thinking coming in this morning that is 131 families who have expectations, hopes, in St. Ouen perhaps and now I know that they were false hopes. That is gone now, they do not come back until the next plan. Families, maybe youngsters thinking: "Well shall I leave the Island or not? Shall I go and work somewhere else?" I think it is possible some of them may well decide it is now time to go, they have been waiting a long time. It is real people. We did get an extra 24, so we have a net loss so far of 107. Left on the table, depending entirely on your votes, you are just about to press these buttons, is another 130 units. Press the button against that they have gone. Okay. I ask myself, yes, okay, look, agriculture has to be a priority but we have got ourselves in a mess. Okay, I want as much transformation as Members have said. Deputy Morel , I want a better system. But we have had to do our best because of the failure to deal with population and a failure to manage the effect of that on housing. There is nothing more basic in human rights than somewhere decent to live. What is affordable? I will try and deal with that. The Connétable of St. Lawrence rightfully asks for what is a definition. Look, put it this way, the law allows us to zone lands for occupation by people who are unable to access the normal housing market. The housing market, we know what it is, it is open market, it is unaffordable.

[10:45]

The planning system, it cannot set the rules under the current law for what is affordable homes. What anybody wants to do of course is to set a price, like the Connétable of St. John , £250,000. If we want to do that we can but we need to have States developments such as they were done in the past, where Government buys the land, develops the home and sells them at a fixed price. That was the way things were done for decades and that served this Island brilliantly. But it stopped, we do not do that now, so that has to be on the agenda for the future. But if we say we are going to work through the open market, you have to have schemes to help people find that money but in a way which is viable under the market. What did we do? We set up Andium Homes to try and do that and they have come forward to our Minister for Housing and Communities and come up with some devices, if you like, that Deputy Russell Labey explained. The whole thing, it does need to be flexible because what will work on one site will not work on another but the whole idea is to enable people to at least get that home in the way that Deputy Russell Labey outlined. That is the basis of the plan, we have a Minister for Housing and Communities. There is a huge amount of work for the Minister for Housing and Communities downstream as we go on site. We have heard, for example, some very good explanations, we heard it from the Constable of St. John , we heard it from the Constable of St. Peter , about how in their communities they see these sites being taken forward. But the reality is that is not part of the planning system who brings them forward. But what is part of the planning system is that every site will have a planning obligation agreement. The planning obligation agreement will force the terms and conditions to what we need to make sure they are affordable and that we get the right sort of homes on those particular sites, and we get things like village greens and we get open space and we get all that. The Constable of St. John spoke about that, absolutely infrastructure improvements, junction improvements, not just the miserable little bus shelter, better than that. If there is no planning agreement they will not get the planning approved. Of course, every site will go to the Planning Committee or the planning inquiry if it is big enough, and all the issues raised on each site by site by site will be aired in public with an open chance to make people's views, that we hear from people; that is what will happen. But what we are doing today is just starting up and saying, in principle, here is a field which comes through the process of priority setting. It is correct that agriculture was only one factor. Obviously, what I hear loud and clear from the Assembly is in future Members want agriculture to be the overriding priority. If that is the case that is perfectly valid, we have to have other ways of getting the brownfield sites developed, as I have said when I started with that. We have to do that. If Members vote this down then that has to happen like lickety- split, as I think the Americans or Canadians say. I have only borrowed that from a friend that told me that. The rules for what is not affordable will be under Ministerial control. I have explicitly made it that the Parish representatives, if this is Parishes or the town representatives are engaged in that in detail, work it up round the table, I have said that. How could I be confident because none of that will carry any weight unless it is done through a supplementary planning guidance, which the Minister for the Environment has the statutory control over? I think Constable of St. Lawrence asked me: is there consultation? An S.P.G. (supplementary planning guidance) has got a statutory requirement for consultation, it is in the law. You cannot write an S.P.G. without consultation in public. This is the start of the journey and today what I am asking Members is, look, we are in a bad place. I did not want to do this, I have to, I have tried to minimise it as best as possible. As all the comments have said, the officers have worked absolutely night and day not just for 18 months but longer than that to bring this to the table. We are at a critical point. We have had good debates on 5 amendments, 5. Members who had strong views on that. They are not just put the amendment, but we have been able to debate them and we have the result and we have 3 of those sites gone and 2 have been added. But overall the balance of numbers is that we are down very significantly. I think this is the crunch now and Members, I think, need to ask themselves, we have signed up trying to meet the housing need, we have here a proposition which is probably the most important, I think, to attempt, to at least make some contribution to that from these sites and Members can either bomb it out, collapse the whole thing or doing what I am having to do, which is on the basis of putting the overriding housing needs first. Of course, the other thing I would mention is I know the Reform

Party, and I agree with so much of what they say, and what I have said about intervention, you will go with that. But I have to ask them, please, do not think that we can solve all our housing problems by only having apartments and flats in the urban areas. Please do not think that. We have been acutely short of family houses for far too long and that has become acute. I think that is a factor to bear in mind. I know Reform, next week we are going to have a debate, I am sure, about the way that States-owned land is developed and it is right too and Members will know that I voted for Senator Mézec 's proposition for 50 per cent affordable housing. Why I did that? Because I anticipated with the Council of Ministers that this debate today would be awful. We have to have that - I have put in an amendment - next week we will discuss that and I can see the reaction to it. Members of the Reform, I know, so please. What, of course, I have got from here is that because of that situation the Reform Party members are seeking to say, well, we are not going to have any green fields, we do not want them, we do not want houses in the village, we do not want the villages to be allowed to breathe, we do not want youngsters in those villages; that, I think, is what the message is coming to me and it is not a message that I can swallow. I want a mixture. We have agreed Deputy Gardiner 's proposition that we can have a mix of Parish and everybody is on the Gateway but a maximum of 50 per cent. As I have heard other Members say, it opens us up and stops some of this division between country and town; it breaks that down. I think also there are real good social reasons why that is a good thing to do but it quite modest, we are not talking big numbers here. One would not want to come up with anymore. I heard lots of words like: "The system is not believable. There is no credibility" and I have written here: "Other people have to go through the planning process", everybody has had to go through the planning process. I must admit it has been very unsettling where after this debate is over, whichever way you go, there are a string of amendments on individual sites, none of which has my support. Two smaller ones are potentially considerable maybe as alternatives, but they are certainly not done with my support or encouragement to come forward. I will be honest, I am pleased that a lot of those amendments have been withdrawn. They have unsettled the public; they have unsettled. Now, Deputy Morel criticised the process and, yes, he has always thought it was the wrong decision to do a bridging Island Plan. I remember when Senator Morel sorry, Senator Morel , I have promoted him, Deputy Morel was a member of the Infrastructure, Housing and Environment Scrutiny Panel, until he got promoted to higher status as a Minister. He was always unhappy about that and he expressed those views. Of course, then he dropped off the panel and probably every single hearing I have had with the Infrastructure, Housing and Environment Scrutiny Panel we have talked about the Island Plan process. We tried to adjust it. We had to make it as best as we could because, as Deputy Morel knows, given the COVID emergency and everything that we went through, what would have happened is that the Island Plan would have gone on to the next Assembly and who knows when that would come? These problems would become more acute. It is a horrible situation. We have got here a list of fields and the debate has been about principles and about some points of detail. I am just looking at my notes to see, because I want to wind up, if there is anything else I need to cover. Again, I think lots of Members made the point about value, where at the moment what happens is that when Government selects a field for zoning then there is a windfall under the current arrangements. One of the things we wanted to do, I certainly would have wanted to do, was to have a development land tax. I have argued consistently in the Council of Ministers for a property tax. We have argued for a land development levy. Every time those measures come before this Assembly, no, people run away from it. Again, in the future, that is something that has to be addressed. Is it fair that landowner X gets a windfall and landowner Y over here does not? That is a public gift. We make that decision in the public interest and the gain goes to a private owner. Until we change the law, until we put in place the mechanisms to manage that, which we have failed to do, we are stuck with it. What we can do is to take as much value out of it as you can. For example, if we have social rented housing that seriously depresses the residual land value, and I know what we are going to get or what the next Minister will get: "I do not want any more social rental housing on this site because I can hardly make it viable and my land value goes down and I do not want that" or where you get one site and other people say: "Oh, I want all affordable homes for sale. I do not want to have any

rented housing. Can I put the rental housing over here?" That is the sort of thing that I tell you will go on under the current system, but we are living in a capitalist society. I would like an alternative society, I would like a different type of rules, but we do not have that, but we can intervene in the market. For example, I keep on citing in the 1990s Government bought the brownfield site at Belle Vue Pleasure Park. They bought it with a compulsory purchase, which was very controversial, that went on for 10 years, right the way up to the Privy Council, and that enabled, by Government buying that land and then commissioning developers to build, I think nearly 300 homes and then selling them to first-time buyers at fixed prices, get this, £140,000 and in those houses everybody said: "Oh, they cannot do that because they might profit and they might sell on" so there was a device, sell on within 10 years and you pay some of it back. It was a sliding scale. Sell after year one you pay 90 per cent back, year 2 80 per cent and so on right the way through and in 10 years you got rid of it. That was a very successful Government intervention in action. That was supported, not just supported, it was by States Members of the past.

[11:00]

We have just lost that creative ability or the bravery to do it, so we are stuck with the market, and that is really the root of why we have to have a plan like this, that works within such a system. I plead to Members, because we are not in a perfect place, what I would like to see is almost like a parallel universe, but it is not. We are here, now. People are in terrible trouble and if families are breaking up because of this issue are we going to say: "No, I would like something better"? I urge Members, I urge them, not to vote for amendment 91 as amended down; so I urge Members. I go now to Senator Moore . Overnight I thought about it probably most of last night, I was in bed, and could not sleep very much thinking: "What am I going to do here?" There are Members here who would like to unpick this, I am clear about that, and say: "I want this bit out. I want this bit out. I want votes on this, that and the other." I decided no, I am going to ask for a vote as it is and then we will all know where this Assembly is. Are you really with homes or are you not? I think that is a choice and if you are not, well, that is your democratic right to do so, but I think you might find that after that debate that questions arise and I am not prepared to be the person that does not make their best efforts to make some inroad into improving housing supply, a very limited supply, with the damage minimised as best as I can, with extensive planning processes to try to make sure we avoid the worst things. I ask for the appel and make the proposition.

The Deputy Bailiff :

Will you accept a point of clarification from the Deputy of Grouville , Minister? Deputy J.H. Young:

Of course, absolutely.

Deputy C.F. Labey of Grouville :

I think the Minister answered the question in his summing up, because I think the St. Peter fields are the only ones in (vi) and (vii) that we have not had a vote on, and I am going to struggle voting for these, so I would have to vote the whole thing down, which I do not especially want to do, but I think that is what we have got in front of us.

The Connétable of St. Lawrence :

I would like to ask the Minister if he would consider taking them as separate sections, so (a) for the withdrawal of the fields and (b) for the inclusion of sites, and then (c) and (d).

The Deputy Bailiff :

I am not sure that is a point of clarification, but, Minister, you have made your position clear.

Deputy J.H. Young:

I think the Connétable does make a good point. I have thought about this. I think technically there is a separate proposition under (a) to follow within the Order Paper, and so if I was to force the vote as an all or nothing that one would still fall to be debated, so I think that seems to be a bit of a spurious situation. So, I would be agreeable to take in a vote on part (a) separate from (b) and the other parts.

The Deputy Bailiff :

So, you propose that the Assembly considers part (a) and then (b), (c) and (d) together? Deputy J.H. Young:

Yes, Sir.

The Deputy Bailiff :

The appel has been called for, Members are invited to return to their seats. We are voting on the amended proposition part (a) first. Those joining the meeting via the Teams link are invited to cast their votes in the chat channel and I ask the Greffier to open the voting for Members in the Chamber. If all Members have had the opportunity of casting their votes then I ask the Greffier to close the voting, and part (a) I can announce of this amendment has been adopted.

The Connétable of Grouville :

A point of order, Sir. Am I allowed to ask the Minister if he would take the item (b) fields separately, because I find myself in the same position as the Deputy of Grouville , I am inclined to have to oppose them all, which is not what I want to do?

The Deputy Bailiff :

He has already made his position clear in relation to that and we are taking (b), (c) and (d) together. So in relation to the balance of this amendment as amended those joining the meeting via the Teams link are asked to cast their votes in the chat channel and I ask the Greffier to open the voting for Members in the Chamber. If all Members have had the opportunity of casting their votes then I ask the Greffier to close the voting. I can announce that the balance of amendment 91 as amended has been adopted.

2. Island Plan 2022-25: Approval (P.36/2021) – sixty-second amendment: Withdrawal of G392A, Grouville (P. 36/2021 Amd.(62))

The Deputy Bailiff :

The next is the 62nd amendment lodged by the Deputy of Grouville and I ask the Greffier to read the amendment.

The Deputy Greffier of the States:

After the words "the draft Island Plan 2022-25" insert the words "except that – (a) the following should be removed from the list of sites to be zoned for affordable homes at Policy H5 – Provision of affordable homes – "1. Field G392A Grouville (0.75 hectares/4.2 vergées)"; (b) the draft Island Plan 2022-25 should be further amended in such respects as may be necessary consequent upon the adoption of paragraph (a); and (c) the Draft Bridging Island Plan Proposals Map Part A – Planning Zones should be amended to reflect the adoption of paragraph (a).

2.1  The Deputy of Grouville :

Field 392A provides one of the last remaining open spaces along the east coast road, where the public can enjoy the most spectacular views to open countryside and the escarpment beyond and, if developed, I believe would have an enormously detrimental visual impact to this area, not just for the residents, because as we all know in planning terms no one has the right to a view, but in this case a rare piece of open space and a respite to the ribbon development which blights the eastern coast road is offered to all road users, people waiting at the bus stop and residents. I have always thought that a picture speaks a thousand words, so I included appendices in my report, which can far better illustrate what would be lost if the fields were developed, and on pages 5, 6, 7 and 8 you will see photographs of the fields and the stunning outlook across the open countryside and the escarpment. While I do not have the experience of the planning inspector I do know this area very well and so do the community and I know that a development on this field, let alone at least 26 units including flats which have been suggested, would ruin this space and create a lot of housing in a very condensed area, an area which is also accessed by a 15-foot wide country lane, Rue des Fonds, which has taken its toll of housing developments in recent years, not least the housing estate at Clos des Fonds opposite. Notwithstanding the fields are not classified as prime lands in a recent survey by the Jersey Farmers' Union, they are in active agricultural use and grow crops every year. With this in mind, and if I could go a little off piste for a moment, given my current international responsibilities on the Ukraine conflict, I put to you the very real prospect that we may suffer a 30 per cent reduction in global grain supply and cereal shortages in these coming months. The conflict has obviously erupted since the commencement of the bridging Island Plan process and I believe that we need to consider

the protection of good, arable land in a renewed light. The conflict may be a far cry from a field in Grouville or elsewhere in the Island, but the possible consequences to food security cannot be ignored as we ride roughshod over agricultural land and it is for this reason I will be voting against, and have voted against most of the agricultural fields in active use. Equally, these fields are rich in biodiversity and offer important carbon sinks. During the course of the bridging Island Plan process I have been contacted and I have met with many parishioners, especially those who live around field 392A, and Members may have followed the coverage of the requete in Grouville last week where a 250-strong meeting was organised to consider the site put forward in Grouville . The result of the meeting was an overwhelming vote against this site and, indeed, all sites in Grouville because of their value to wildlife and the environmental value of our carbon sink.

[11:15]

Another strong message from the meeting was the need for a population policy and with the forthcoming census data due later this year a robust population policy has simply got to be a priority and how we provide for our young people in Jersey. I would like to make my amendment and I look forward to hearing Members' views on field 392A and our last remaining open space along the East Coast Road.

The Deputy Bailiff :

Thank you, Deputy . Is the amendment seconded? [Seconded]. Does any Member wish to speak on the amendment?

1. Deputy J.H. Young:

This site is the only one in Grouville that I have supported and this is a site that was in what euphemistically is called the plan A list, so it has been out there since April last, when we published the draft plan, April 2021, and it has been right the way through the process, extensive process, of consultation and examination at the inquiry. There were certainly representations made at the inquiry because it is quite a small site. It has, as you say, got the potential for 26 homes but it does not mean to say that 26 homes will happen, and of course I heard the Deputy speak of flats. I have just asked about that. I said: "Where does that come from? Who has agreed flats?" and I have said: "Well, apparently, Andium Homes are already in discussions with the landowner on this site" so that explains the fact why this process is going to have to be supervised by the Minister for Housing and Communities on the zoned sites, and of course they will have to get planning consent and if the design or the layout is inappropriate then it will not get it approved. I do not think any assumptions can be made about what that development is. Now, in all the work I did, it was my understanding that there was a wish - maybe I have got this wrong in view of recent developments - in Grouville there was an aspiration to have a small amount, a limited number, of family homes within their Parish, exactly as we have heard from the other Parishes. If that has changed and now that is not needed then I think I would like to hear that either from the Constable or the Deputy when the Deputy sums up. Of course, what has really made life extremely shaky is all these amendments that came forward. In fact, the Connétable had one, this issue of agricultural land; the Connétable rightly makes the point about agricultural land, but until a few days ago there was a proposition from him proposing the zoning of green lands, which I was not very happy with, because it goes right on to an S.S.I. (Site of Special Interest) but that has gone now, thankfully. So, we have just got the one site, and of course what does the agricultural industry tell us about it? They say it is the least problematic site. It is not one of the top priorities, die in a ditch site. It is not. So, it is a good site, and it would be a shame, in my view, to lose it because of what has gone on in that lovely Parish down in the south-east corner, which is I think wonderful, but to have a limited small site which can be tightly within the built area, which will not spoil it, I think it would be really sad to lose it. Much has been made of flood risk. The advice I got from the officers is that that can be dealt with, there will be mitigations in the supplementary planning guidance and that will deal with highway access and footway connections

and, most particularly, improvements to the eastern cycle route network. I can hear the Deputy asking how that can be done. It will be done by planning obligation agreements, where I say we will not just get bus shelters out of these schemes, we will get more and if the developer does not sign a planning obligation agreement they will not get consent. It is possible I believe from all the advice to be able to have landscape and boundary treatments of that, whatever goes on there, and open space. We do not want wall-to-wall homes, so the way all that can be done in terms of the work it cannot just be left to the landowner and one party, Andium Homes, on their own. I do not know if there has been consultation with the Connétable , perhaps the Connétable could speak and let me know, because I would like to know that, because if it has not that has to be rectified, but always assuming the site remains in the zoning. I cannot support. I understand the Deputy 's sincerity absolutely with her commitment to agriculture and that has been demonstrated in all the votes thus far, I understand that and there is nothing wrong with that, but in terms of this site I think there is a bigger picture to address. As I say I would like to hear what has happened to the aspiration of homes in Grouville . Has that gone away now? Has that gone away because of what has happened that has scared us off? Really good points were made in the debate but it is such a shame that really reflected on this one good site, where the others I do not believe had any chance, but I would like to hear from the Constable about that. Also, he may not have the answer to this about whether or not there has been consultation with the Parishes, because I think it is important that Constables take a lead to ensure that wherever sites go ahead what we get is what the Parish can live with or accept, and not something foisted on them.

2. Deputy I. Gardiner of St. Helier :

I am sure I am not the only States Member that is really struggling to make decisions through this debate. There are inconsistencies, there are big question marks around how many houses we need as we are basing our decisions on the 2019 numbers, which is 3 years ago. We do not have a census; at the same time we know that we are in a housing crisis. I know the Minister, and I note he is leaving, has a really difficult job on his hands to convince us to allow to build more, because this is where we are. I understand that he needs some time. In the last vote I have changed several times from pour to contre, I basically changed the buttons but I really struggled because I agree that there were fields that I did not agree, at the same time it is genuine I do not want to build on green fields. At the same time I do not want to build on green fields in St. Helier more. I realise we are not going to build on the glasshouses for the next 3 years and I realise we need to supply houses, but guiding me through this, with these green fields next to the village centres, for sure none of the green fields in St. Helier I will be voting for. I really feel that St. Helier residents deserve some countryside next to their houses, so next to the villages, not used currently by herds, this is where I was and I think the last one, it is about what parishioners think, what the Constables think, what the Deputies think. It is important because at the end of the day these are residents in these Parishes. Again, I need to apologise to all Grouville residents; I did not have a chance to respond to all emails. I have read them and I do understand them and I hear what residents of Grouville are saying to me as a States Member. I can hear what the Deputy of Grouville is saying to me, altogether green fields not next to the village, and the wish of the residents I would be supporting the Deputy on this amendment.

3. The Connétable of Grouville :

I note the Minister is not in the Chamber but I do hope he is listening next door, which I am sure he is, because he asked me some questions and, yes, of course I recognise and the Parish recognises that we need to provide some affordable homes, and I would like to provide affordable homes for people who have got connections with the Parish, and that is why I put forward the field that I did. My field had one big disadvantage, the field that I put forward, inasmuch that it is close to Grouville Marsh, and I was hoping that within my proposition the buffer zone between where the buildings would end and Grouville Marsh would be able to mitigate it. Maybe we went about it the wrong way as a Parish and we should have had more consultation, because there is an acknowledgement within the

community that we do need to find some homes, and maybe there are other fields that are better than this one. As far as its value to agriculture is concerned all of the fields in Grouville , bar 2, and the Minister's is one of them, I have worked and I know the soil pretty well and he is right that this is considered by the Farmers' Union as their third category, as is my field, but this is every bit as good as the field I was putting forward. I acknowledge that we do have to find somewhere but I do not think this is the right site. I was required by presentation of a requete to call a Parish Assembly, which of course I did. The Deputy is right that 250 people did say they were coming, we had a pre- registration system to try to make the management of the meeting a little bit easier. As it turned out 199 people turned out, and we know that is an accurate figure because we had our officers from the Parish checking people to make sure that they were eligible to vote. The fourth and last item on the agenda that evening reads: "To request the Constable to relay to the States Assembly their strong support on environmental and other grounds for amendment 62 to the Island Plan 2022-25 P.36/2021 in the name of the Deputy of Grouville in relation to the withdrawal of field G398 Grouville from the list of sites to be zoned for affordable homes." So the meeting was overwhelmingly in favour of that proposition. I was prepared and my officials had ballot papers ready should we need to take a ballot if it was close, so even if we were struggling to know how many were opposed, as it turned out I initially had asked for a show of hands and had prewarned my officials if they could count those numbers, if it was manageable to count, and they counted 17 hands that were put up. So they may have missed a hand, there may have been the odd person who abstained, but quite clearly 10 per cent or less of people at that meeting were against this proposition of Deputy Labey . The meeting was overwhelming and the agenda item mentions their strong support. I think that indicates tremendous support but what it does not reflect is the passion of the people in that Parish all that evening who were so vehemently opposed to this development. The 1771 Code directs a Constable to, when he thinks necessary, consult with his parishioners but when I am in here I have a free hand and I should do what I think best and I have always done so. In this case I have a free hand but I am only too pleased to be able to support this amendment. I am also not seeking re-election, so I do not have to do anything that is popular. I do so for a number of reasons, similar to those of the Deputy of Grouville . People do live around here and I know some of them, some of them I have known for a very long time, and it will have an effect on them and the area where they live. There is a very derogatory term in my view, a N.I.M.B.Y. (not in my back yard) and it is only N.I.M.B.Y.s. It was not only N.I.M.B.Y.s in the Parish Hall the other evening, but I think we are probably all N.I.M.B.Y.s. Who would want a development in front of you and it could be in St. Helier here?

[11:30]

My son lived in an apartment here, they had an apartment on the fifth floor and a building was built alongside it and they lost their sea view. I am sure they did not want that, and I am sure pretty much all of us are to some extent N.I.M.B.Y.s. They are ordinary people, and this development will affect their lives and there is quite a number of them, and the more people who are affected the more we should take that into consideration. Enjoyment of their life will diminish, and the value of their property will diminish, but it is not something probably we take into consideration enough, but I do recognise that if this were to be developed it would affect those people. I have not worked this field, but I have worked a field a stone's throw away. It is a good field. It is low-lying so you cannot grow overwintered crops, but you can grow anything and just about everything else and it is an easy field to work. It grows a crop of potatoes every year and it has some advantage when you are growing potatoes because it is very easy to harvest. If you get a wet harvest season and you get 4 or 5 days of rain, if you try to harvest a field near me you simply cannot do it; you have to wait 4 or 5 days because the machinery  gets all gummed up with mud, potatoes are covered in mud and are unmarketable. This field, because of its light soil, it can rain for a week and you can go in the next day and harvest it, so it has some massive advantages. It will grow anything that you would expect to grow in Jersey; in fact the coastal plain of Grouville , St. Clement and St. Ouen are microclimates. I know this because glasshouse growers monitor the temperature and I know that the average

temperature in this area is approximately 1½ degrees on average per day higher than where I live up near Hougue Bie. So, it is good soil and the Farmers' Union on their category made it category 3, less important, but it does not make it not important at all. It is a good field, it is in use and people are making a profit from it. St. Ouen 's Bay, the other end of the Island of course, is fantastic and from Corbière, past the end of the airport runway all the way to L'Etacq and all the escarpment below, all the land below right down to the seashore, the low water mark and beyond, is fantastic and quite rightly it receives the highest protection in our existing Island Plan and certainly in the new one. You can drive along the Five Mile Road and you can see it and enjoy it and you appreciate it and whether you appreciate it just for what it looks like or because you appreciate the environmental importance of it, it is spectacular. Of course, Grouville 's coast road is completely different. There has been ribbon development, which stretches now pretty much from St. Helier all the way to the Vardon statute and there are hardly any breaks in the whole length of that road, so if you get to the St. Clement , Grouville La Rocque border you will go probably a mile before you see the first field, and there is a tiny one at Le Hurel but you do not really get to the countryside. You go on a little bit further, well, a little bit further, it is probably another mile, and you get to the Marais à la Cocque Meadow, which is on the other side of the road to the fields that Deputy Wickenden is proposing. You do not see much countryside. There is a meadow and then you cannot see any further because there are the remains of an embankment of the Eastern Railway. So the only real stretch of that road where you see the countryside, and you can imagine if you were a tourist and you were staying in one of the east coast hotels, you might be forgiven for thinking it is a coastal town with the countryside miles away, but the only window you get on the countryside from St. Helier all the way to Gorey is this particular window. I do not know if any Members have got the map of the field that is being proposed in front of you, but just looking at it over one-third of that window is going to be closed. We are going to be blanking up some windowpanes of what is a fantastic view. How long before we get mission creep? If you do not think that would happen, fields just on the other side of that gap were being proposed by Deputy Wickenden. Fortunately, he has withdrawn those. This is the only window where you see Jersey's countryside along the whole of that road for locals to enjoy as well as holidaymakers. This is not part of a village. There is no village. I have never heard of anybody talk about Verona Stores Village. It is visually significant and will change the area. The final point I would like to make, which is the most important one, if we had not had all the ribbon development on the coast road it would be a bit like the Five Mile Road. You would go along it, see the spectacular, unique foreshore, of course, which is incredible, nothing else like it anywhere else in the world, but you would be looking across to unspoilt countryside all the way along and I suspect, if that were the case, we would have a western coastal park and an eastern coastal park, because that land is a very important environment. Just because there is a row of houses along the main road does not make the environment behind it less important and the Minister recognises that because he does note that it is important as part of the wildlife corridor between the Grouville Marsh and the wet marsh of the Fauvic wetlands, marshlands and he is absolutely right. At the Parish Assembly, a local environmentalist, Bob Tompkins - and I mention him because he will be well-respected by Members here and I know he will not mind me mentioning his name - he explained just how important this was, far better than I can, of course. In the winter, because crops are not grown, it provides essential habitat for all sorts of migratory, wading birds and all other sorts of wildlife. It is every bit as important as the coastal park at St. Ouen , St. Peter and St. Brelade . We would not dream of extending buildings out into that coastal park and I suggest we most definitely should not be doing that here.

4. Deputy S.M. Wickenden of St. Helier :

I raise some of the things that I was hoping the Constable in his speech before me would have at least mentioned. That is, the Parish did go out in Grouville and ask 2 questions on 2 different things. One was how many parishioners want, require or need over-55 housing? How many need first-home buyer housing and how many need social rents and they went out and sent a letter to every household in Grouville , and I have got 2 of them. There were 59 parishioners within Grouville that came back

saying they would like over-55 housing, and there was 29 Grouville parishioners that came back saying they would require first-time buyer housing. They may not have been at the requete, they may not have wanted to be jumped on by their neighbours, and being on the Planning Committee for 6 years I know that planning ruins more neighbourly friendships than anything I know on this Island. I wanted to quickly add those points, that though there was a requete, though there has been lots of people jumping up and down, former Senators, 2 of them, there are some parishioners in Grouville who want to downsize, who want to buy their first-time buyer homes and want to stay within the Parish. Now, the Deputy of Grouville is right about this field. If this field is built on it will change the view and landscape on driving through Grouville and up towards St. Martin to Mont Orgueil for ever and that would be a tragedy. You can see straight across, as the Constable says, from the road to the countryside, across this field, and it would be missed greatly, I am sure, that view evermore if this is to be done. But I wanted to make sure that the Assembly is aware, because it was not mentioned, there was a report that went out, a questionnaire that went out on the scheme to all parishioners if they required, if they wanted to stay in the Parish, if they required different levels of housing need. They responded, they are out there and there is a need of parishioners who want to stay in Grouville who do not have the ability right now. With that I just think it was fair to put it there and leave it there.

5. Deputy J.A. Martin of St. Helier :

It is good to follow Deputy Wickenden but I have probably got a different take on this. I have had many, many, many emails from Grouville , I have told every single one of them that I watched the whole meeting on Teams. So, there was, I now know, 199 people there. I would say the 199 people there, every man, woman and child of them probably live in a very nice home. Seventeen voted for the field to be built on. Then I think back, I have done, this is the third Island Plan and I do know that land has been rezoned in Gorey, Grouville , for the last couple of times. It even gets a bit more: "Well you built me a home; I built a home on reclaimed land but no more." That is how I am seeing it. It took a very brave 17 people to put their hands up. I was out in Grouville , I had something on, but I should have said to the Minister for Housing and Communities: "Can we go to every single person who is on the Andium waiting list, the Gateway to buy, to rent, over 1,000 or more, 2,000, can we get them in that Grouville church and the Grouville Parish Hall next Thursday and then put their points?" Because they do not have a home. The majority do not have a home. I am sorry that there has been some recent development and you cannot see the meadows. What do you see when I walk from St. Clement all the way through St. Saviour , all the way through town to get to Broad Street? Not meadows, I can assure you. I am seeing homes and I said to the people in Grouville I will listen to this debate and I am still listening, but I said to the Minister for Housing and Communities I want to vote for everywhere that it has been through the proper channels, the inspector has put these in, there was no issue from X, Y, or Z, and that will be the Farmers' Union, et cetera, because I am not the type of person who 3 months ago, and if you identify yourself in this, stand up screaming: "We have a housing crisis." It is a crisis. It cannot be said nothing more than a crisis. Admit it is a crisis. Put your fingers out and say it is a crisis. Then today go: "No, I am going to vote against building anymore homes though." These debates, this is my third one, they are never good, and I think my ex-Constable, lovely Len Norman, God rest his soul, fought to stop having Samarès even in the last debate. As I say, today I look out of my window and I see some beautiful homes, kids playing, where they come from I do not know, but they are beautiful homes, some are bought and some are rented. Then there is a field next door, so they do have a field next door. They have the sea just across the road and they have all little integral parks and walkways through the estate. I walk around there often myself, just going out for a walk. So I have sympathy for the people who wrote to me. The marsh one, I think that has gone, but this is the field that the Minister wants because the inspector said it was fine. It was a one-sided meeting, to go there and say: "No, not in my backyard, no more."

[11:45]

When they were probably sitting in a house that was rezoned 20 years ago and, if not 20 years ago, 30 years ago. They are denying all those thousands of youngsters who we are all supposed to be caring about, because we have a housing crisis. Reform, they have told us this. Well, if you want us to agree it, let us see which way you vote. I really think we did miss a trick; we should have had more people at that Parish Hall . I got the impression it was only people from Grouville that were wanted there. I was told, no, that I would have to put my name down. But, anyway, my opinion would not have counted. But I would have loved to have paraded 1,000 people who really need their homes to tell them exactly what they feel.

6. The Connétable of St. Brelade :

I am going to cover a couple of brief points to pick up on the Minister's response. I would like just to understand the definition of improvements. We all have a different interpretation of that. His was that supplemental planning obligations would control the whole development in terms of these improvements. Now I make the point that not everybody likes the suburbanisation of our countryside and we are probably on different planets when it comes to that. If this field is developed, in fact if any fields are developed, there is complete suburbanisation of those areas. The whole aspect will change. The Connétable has pointed out that this will alter the look from the road where the public pass regularly. It will be a different scenario. I would just like to ask Members to consider that particular point when they are voting.

The Deputy Bailiff :

Thank you. Connétable . If no other Member wishes to speak, I call upon the Deputy of Grouville to reply.

7. The Deputy of Grouville :

The Minister described this as a limited small site. Yes, it is a limited small site and, like I said in my opening remarks, it has so far 26-unit homes identified for it. But we all know that will not happen, do we not? The 26 will become 36. But, regardless of limited small site, it is the wrong site. That is what I say. I know this area really well. It is what the Constable said, it is what the community said. To answer Deputy Martin about where were the first-time buyers, where were the rightsizers at the meeting? Good question, where were they? Why were they not there making their point of view? I know, and I understand that they would have had to be quite brave, because they may have been in the minority, but nonetheless they could have come, it was a very well-run meeting. They would have been listened to. But they did not and that I feel is unfortunate. When the Minister said this is a limited small site, and like I say the wrong site, because it has the last remaining open views for everyone to enjoy between St. Helier and Gorey of the countryside and the escarpments. Those who went around on the planning bus will know exactly what I mean, and indeed I have those photographs in my report. Grouville has taken its share of development in recent years and we have played our part. What is more, our school, which is an excellent school, is full. The surrounding area, which is the lane which runs parallel to this field, has taken a lot of housing of late. We have had housing at Left Fork Farm, Old Forge Lane, Rue de la Pasture, Pike Farm, Clos de l'Église, and the 30-plus houses on the estate opposite field 392A at Clos des Fonds, all serviced by very small lanes, 15-foot wide in some places, which to my mind not only calls into question the safety and enjoyment of pedestrians and cyclists trying to access their homes, but their constant use erodes hedgerows, vegetation and the whole character of country lanes. The Planning Department themselves demands a 16-foot access road to new builds, yet this inspector approved this field where the access lanes fall short of their own regulations. Another 26-plus houses in this area would simply be too much and too dense. As I say, we have an overcrowded school and it will have a hugely detrimental visual impact to the area and it will adversely affect our food security, biodiversity and carbon sinks. The environment, the landscape, the school, the lanes, simply cannot take it. Now, we all recognise the failure to find an acceptable balance for our community between our environment

and the economy, but it should not be paid for in this valuable land. We know young people need homes, but these homes have to be in the right places. This field is not one of those. I make my amendment.

The Deputy Bailiff :

Is the appel called for? The Deputy of Grouville : Yes please.

The Deputy Bailiff :

Thank you, Deputy . The appel has been called for. Members are invited to return to their seats. Those joining the meeting via the Teams link are invited to cast their votes in the chat channel and I ask the Greffier to open the voting for Members in the Chamber.

Deputy M. Tadier :

I voted on the wrong desk, just so you know, obviously this is Deputy Alves ' desk. She is not here. I have voted on mine but I do not want 2 votes recorded.

The Deputy Bailiff :

Thank you, we will try to sort that out. That is fine. If all Members have had the opportunity of casting their votes, then I ask the Greffier to close the voting. I can announce that the amendment has been adopted.

3. Island Plan 2022-25: Approval (P.36/2021) – twelfth amendment: Removal of Field H1219 St. Helier (P.36/2021 Amd.(12))

The Deputy Bailiff :

The next is the 12th amendment lodged by the Connétable of St. Helier . I ask the Greffier to read the amendment.

The Deputy Greffier of the States:

After the words "the draft Island Plan 2022-25" insert the words "except that (a) the following should be removed from the list of sites to be zoned for affordable homes in Policy H5 - Provision of affordable homes - 5. Field H1219 St. Helier (1.20 hectares/6.6 vergées); (b) the draft Island Plan 2022-25 should be further amended in such respects as may be necessary consequent upon the adoption of paragraph (a); (c) the draft Bridging Island Plan Proposals Map Part A - Planning Zones should be amended to reflect the adoption of paragraph (a)."

3.1  The Connétable of St. Helier :

My concern is that with each successful bid to save good agricultural fields from development it gets harder to do so. I do not know why this field in St. Helier is so far down the list, but there we are. It is of course the fifth of the 5 fields in St. Helier that were slated for development in the bridging Island Plan. It is the fifth one and it is the last one. I hope the fact that 4 others have been saved from development will not tempt Members to think: "We better let this one go through." The Roads Committee of St. Helier visited all 4 sites, because of course the fifth one was a Johnny-come-lately plan B site, but we visited all 4 sites that were put down for development last year on a brilliant summer day. Meeting many of the residents while we were doing so. As Members will I hope know by now, the St. Helier Roads Committee is a little like the Comité Rural that the Constable of St. John has been talking so usefully about in that it is an elected body, it has met in public for nearly 16 years with published agendas and minutes and it is an important elected body for St. Helier's population. So, the fact that the St. Helier Roads Committee was unanimous in its view that the 4 fields we visited on that summer day should not be developed I hope will carry some weight when the Assembly comes to vote. This field of course, if Members are not familiar with it, there is a lot to take in, in this debate, is right next to Haute Vallée School, in between the school and the extension of Clos Vaze across from the west. It was of course debated in the last Island Plan.

[12:00]

When it was debated in 2011, it was described as good-quality farmland, which is a good shape and size with a long history of agricultural use. The development of the eastern half of the field for housing would be considered a loss to the farming industry. That of course is the position today. When we visited it I think it was in cauliflowers. But my memory may be wrong on that. So, the committee, when we were there, were very struck by the fact that it is of course right next to Haute Vallée School. While the agricultural arguments are strong here, I believe that the proximity of this site to St. Helier 's only secondary school is worth thinking about. I would be hopeful that St. Helier Deputy and Minister for Education, Deputy Wickenden, would be willing to support my amendment when he considers the strategic importance of this field being right next to the school campus. The part that is slated for development is next to the car park and the other section of the field has long been reserved for an expansion of the school. It seems to make no sense to me to argue that one part of the field will be useful for the school but not the other one. It does not make sense. I believe that is a very good reason to keep this field in agriculture. Because, if it were to come out of agriculture, then surely it should come out of agriculture to give the school more room to breathe, more room to

grow. The committee were considering, for example, if it came out of agriculture, why not use it for the use of the school? What school cannot do with more space for its pupils? We were thinking, and I have mentioned this before in the debates, about the possibility that it could be used as some kind of community field for the school to use. We were also aware as we viewed the field that it is well used by local residents of that part of St. Helier and, even as we were there, there were people walking, of course sensibly around the edge of the field because it was full of caulis, with their dogs and so on. The Roads Committee was also concerned about the impact of potential housing on the field because of the fact that it is right next to Clarke Avenue and the top of St. John 's Road and Members will not need reminding how difficult traffic is at that junction. Of course, it has been very much on our minds with the potential movement of the hospital up to Overdale that the traffic chaos that exists on Queen's Road and at the top of St. John's Road can only get worse. Putting another housing estate into the mix is going to make the traffic even worse. It is not so much the traffic we are concerned about as Parish-elected representatives, it is the fact that hundreds of schoolchildren walk to and from Haute Vallée School every day and it is really difficult. To place another housing estate in this would make it even more difficult for the children who live there. The Roads Committee accepts that more housing is required in the Island. But our contention is that St. Helier is already fulfilling more than its fair share of meeting housing demand. There are currently more than 1,000 units, which are being built and will come on stream in the north of town alone. I pick up occasionally a slight inference that St. Helier should be talking about sheltered housing schemes and people have sometimes asked me: "Why is St. Helier not pursuing a sheltered housing scheme the way such-and- such a Parish is?" Of course, I suppose you would have to go back to the 16th century to find our Parish church with a field next to it that could be developed for people wanting to live in the heart of St. Helier , as of course happened in Trinity recently. St. Helier does not have the luxury of green fields that we can build homes on. Although I should add that of course one of our residential homes, St. Helier House, which had to close due to the problem with the cladding, on People's Park, the use of that is being explored with Andium to see if we can have some kind of sheltered accommodation there. Because we would like, as a Parish, to have a Parish sheltered accommodation, kind of cottage homes if it were possible. But of course, being in the town centre or being near the town centre it will presumably be slightly more densely constructed than equivalent cottage homes around the Island. St. Helier is already doing a lot and I have argued in previous debates that allowing the Parish to extend into the countryside is simply wrong. The people who live in the outskirts of St. Helier , the people who live particularly La Pouquelaye at the top of Queen's Road, they need their space too. They need places to walk. They need places to relax and get exercise. Allowing the town to simply sprawl into the countryside is wrong in every respect. I want just perhaps finally before I finish to pick up on a point that Deputy Guida made in a previous debate. It was on the 91st amendment. It was quite interesting to me because it was the first time in this entire debate that anyone has really raised the whole, you could describe it as, the elephant in the room. That is a bit of a cliché. What Deputy Guida said was that the real problem in Jersey is the lack of 4-bedroom homes. Of course, he does not mean homes at all; he means houses. He means houses. In fact, he said houses with gardens, small gardens, he said. It is interesting to me because in previous debates on the Island Plan we have spent a lot more time debating what we mean by a home in Jersey. I believe it is frankly unsustainable for the Assistant Minister for the Environment to be saying that everybody has a right to live in a 4-bedroom home with a garden and with a garage. It is unsustainable. The way the population is increasing we simply cannot do that. We have to accept, in the interests of sustainability, that the closer we live to the village centres, the closer we live to the capital, then the more sustainable that is going to be. I am afraid that the Island has yet to really grasp true environmental sustainability when it comes to housing. Because what that means in other places, what that means in Paris, what that means in Vienna, is that people do not see living in a flat, in an apartment, as a problem. Families live in apartments because the apartments are big, they have high ceilings, they have extra rooms, they have big balconies, they have roof terraces, they have enormous parks around the apartments where the people can live. But if I had a pound for every time I hear

someone saying: "We do not want to live in St. Helier because we want to live in a house in the countryside." It is a great idea and perhaps if we were in the U.K. (United Kingdom) or in France that is something we could do. But in Jersey we cannot. If we continue to feed the argument that everybody has the right to live in a house, semi-detached or detached, with a garden, hopefully front and back, with a garage, with a carport, then we are going to cover the Island with houses. I would urge Members to bear that in mind so that when I make the argument here that St. Helier is fulfilling the requirement for homes in St. Helier , these are homes in the heart of town with access to all the services, with easy access to schools and to work and to shops and to restaurants. There is nothing wrong with pursuing that agenda because in the end it will save green fields from development. So, I urge Members to spare this field on the outskirts of St. Helier from development. It is in agricultural use. It could one day be important for Haute Vallée School. If it is to have a future outside agriculture that is where it should be. I urge Members to support the amendment.

The Deputy Bailiff :

Thank you, Connétable . Is the amendment seconded? [Seconded]

1. Deputy S.M. Ahier of St. Helier :

It is most unfortunate that I am today speaking against this amendment to remove field H1219 from the bridging Island Plan. I am soundly of the opinion that agricultural fields should rarely, if ever, be given up for housing. My primary reason for doing so is to hopefully ensure that fully-accessible homes for people with disabilities will be able to be developed on this site. My reasoning for this will be explained in more detail during the debate on the 78th amendment, which will follow this debate if this amendment is defeated. The strategic issues and options consultation carried out as part of the Island Plan review in 2019 found that, of the 7 different spatial strategy options presented in the consultation, respondents showed the most support focusing development within St. Helier with 71 per cent of respondents supporting this option. The independent planning inspector's report into the draft Bridging Island Plan noted that H1219 lies well within the urban area at perhaps the most sustainable location of all the proposed allocations and that the field appears to have no exceptional ecological value. It therefore seems as if this site is a strong candidate for rezoning. The benefits of its urban location are likely to be more keenly felt by people who are more dependent on services, such as, for example, public transport. The Objective Assessment of Housing Need report states that homes are best provided in those parts of the Island's built-up area with best access and proximity to local services, facilities and public transport. It is logical to conclude that people with disabilities would benefit from accommodation, which affords the best access and proximity to services that they require. If this is accepted, then field H1219's proximity to Mont a l'Abbé School might prove a great help to families with disabled children. The proposer, in his report, informs us that the western half of the field is allocated to the school and only the eastern half is being discussed today for allocation of homes. The proposer is primarily concerned about the impact of traffic congestion if this area is developed further. I understand the Roads Committee's objections to this development, however I do not think that any major traffic disruption will be caused if the site is appropriately assigned. I do not believe it will be necessary to install traffic lights at the end of Clarke Avenue to prevent further congestion, as suggested by the report. I do accept that the land is regarded as being good agricultural land and that the Jersey Farmers' Union has suggested that it should be retained for that purpose. Unfortunately, we are here to make some difficult decisions and I believe that this sacrifice is one that we should seriously consider today. The pressure of delivering housing to our Islanders continues to fall predominantly upon St. Helier but hopefully this will be the only concession that the Parish will have to make. I ask Members to give all consideration to my amendment while contemplating this proposal and to therefore endorse the decision to allocate this field for suitable homes, thereby rejecting this amendment.

Deputy J.H. Young:

I have a point of order I would like to have clarified, the point of procedure here. Deputy Ahier mentioned his amendment that follows. Could we have guidance on whether or not that still will be debated; that is amendment 78, which amends policy H6? Whereas the Constable's amendment that we are debating now amends policy H5. Sorry to ask, but I would like to just be clearer, do the 2 stand separately or are they linked?

The Deputy Bailiff :

They are linked to the extent that if this amendment succeeds then the next amendment will fall away. Deputy J.H. Young:

In its entirety?

The Deputy Bailiff :

In its entirety. That is accepted by Deputy Ahier . Does any Member wish to speak on this amendment?

2. Deputy J.H. Young:

Thank you for clarifying that. I wanted to be clear about that. Again, this one, this particular field, I remember it many, many years ago when the land for the Haute Vallée School was, from my memory, compulsorily acquired. Indeed, it was always considered at that time that, by acquiring the land as a whole and with the school layout, there would be the potential for additional housing development if needed in the future. The Haute Vallée School has probably been there 25 years. But also recognising absolutely, as the Constable says, that it also offered the lands for expansion of the school in future. That is why this field has been protected for education purposes and it still is proposed that the western part would be protected for both.

[12:15]

That obviously does allow the capability in the future for community facilities for a school. At the moment of course there is a big security fence, as there are all around all schools these days, for valid reasons, between the field and the school. That did not use to be the case but of course it is now. The question arises, the Constable asked, it is a good question, what is the sense? As I see it, looking at the drawing there, the issue of access, I do not see that there would be any difficulty in having the access from the existing Haute Vallée School to the western part separately. So that does not ruin the opportunity for that to happen. Of course, it is absolutely right, and again this is not unusual, that development on this site will require major access and highway improvements, which again would have to be done by planning obligation agreements with the developer. Obviously, that is completely a downstream issue. Of course, I do understand the Constable's point, he has long been, as far as I can remember, an advocate of European apartment-style living. I do understand that. Of course, that goes with people not having cars and all this type of thing and of course we do have an amendment from the Constable about parking and so on. So, we are not there yet. I do understand that vision of urban living in apartments. But we still have a more mixed situation, younger single people are very much taken to that situation, but others do not. So, for example, we have also seen recent successful developments around Clos Vaze and Upland Court, for example. So that sort of development of homes, which are not apartments, is very much Jersey at the moment. Now the Constable criticised my Assistant Minister, Deputy Guida. I think he was illustrating a principle. I do understand what was said about 4-bedroom homes because they are large homes. But, in my mind, I have a much more modest thing, probably family homes of around 900 to 1,000 square feet or 100 square metres, whichever way you want to call it in old money, and very small gardens. We are talking about gardens of no more than 15 metres, so they are really quite small, and trying to use those spaces. So I do not think that is a reason for saying no. Of course, this has been and is true this is a loss to

agriculture, I have to accept. But Members who take the view that the overriding issue is always agriculture then obviously they will not be persuaded by my arguments. But this is one of the most sustainable sites because it is right on the edge of St. Helier and it has all the amenities. You have everything. In terms of sustainability and so on, it is not right for the Constable to say this is not sustainable. The sustainability review said that it was. How it is developed, I do not think for one minute it will finish up, if it is approved for development, being 4-bedroom homes. It is likely to be something different. That is all I wanted to say. It is rather disappointing because, I must admit, I had hoped that we could take these 2 amendments separately. That we would be able to decide on this one of the Connétable and then, if that was won, still debate Deputy Ahier 's amendment. Because the second part of Deputy Ahier 's amendment refers to a completely different policy, which is about homes for people with disabilities. It is a real shame that we have to make a decision here, which will bomb out the possibility for homes for the disabled. Because they desperately need that. Is anybody going to argue this is the wrong place for homes for disability? In view of your direction, to me that absolutely adds to the case for voting against the Constable's amendment. Because, if I could have voted, I would have voted against the Constable and voted to support Deputy Ahier , because where else, H6, special homes, let us recognise that. Very important. I know it is true that all modern buildings now are built to building regulations. But to have a scheme especially for and could be promoted for the people who have those special needs strikes me as being really important. To put them on the edge of town, I mean are we going to plonk them, are we going to do those developments miles away from anywhere? No. So, I add the fact that we have that procedural situation, which is very disappointing, because obviously Deputy Ahier could have still brought forward his proposition with only (b) on it, in which case I would have hoped we could have discussed it. So all that means to me is it adds to the reasons why regrettably, Constable, I have to vote against it. Now, if it is rejected, I would hope that you would be supportive of what Deputy Ahier proposes. There we are. I will leave it there.

Deputy K.F. Morel :

It is really just a point of order and it is the same one. If the Greffe could look at whether the entirety of the 39th item, the 78th amendment, falls away. Because I entirely agree with the Minister's point that they were talking about 2 separate policies and so taking one out of one policy does not ordinarily take it straight out of another policy. Otherwise, it would have been better to debate Deputy Ahier 's amendment first and then the Connétable 's amendment.

The Deputy Bailiff :

The difficulty is, Deputy , it is the same site, and once it is removed from the list of the sites it is removed and there is nothing to amend. Does any Member wish to speak on this amendment?

3. Deputy I. Gardiner :

I wish that we would discuss the 2 amendments connected to the same fields at our Deputy meetings that we had and not have this, and we would be bringing to the States something more round as the St. Helier representatives. Because we would be able to consult with our parishioners and to understand what is their needs. I think it is not a surprise, I am generally against developing on the green fields. I do recognise how important it is to address the needs of the people with disability and this is the reason that I brought 4 amendments into the bridging Island Plan that were accepted by the Minister, and they are already part of the bridging Island Plan. I would like to bring Members' attention to my amendment that was accepted and it is already part of the bridging Island Plan, which is the 22nd. I hope this will be followed through all planning applications for all developments. What the amendment asked, and I hope it will be performed, that all homes will support independent living for those with disabilities and additional needs. Within policy H6 that the homes will be designed and adapted to special needs. In policy GD6 to achieve the highest standards of accessible and inclusive design having the regard to meet needs people with disabilities. I am not saying that

the suggestion from Deputy Ahier is wrong one, I do believe we need homes for people with disabilities. I just hope that more homes will adopt the amendment only in this place and on this half of the field the homes will be suitable for the people with disabilities. I hope these policies will follow through at other places. So, coming back to the Constable's amendment, because it is 2 amendments that are connected, we did not discuss what are the needs of the school. In other things we have proposed to have a neighbourhood filling, north of town, up from Rouge Bouillon, up to St. John , we do not have anything that connects this big part of the Island as a neighbourhood. Nowhere. If I need to meet parishioners they need to come to the Town Hall . I do not have any space for neighbourhood meeting, neighbourhood connection, neighbourhood activities. The youth club at La Pouquelaye almost lost their space just a month ago for various reasons. It is still under a big question mark if it would have space for the youth club at La Pouquelaye, which is very well attended. I do believe, if this field will go out from the agriculture, we need to have serious discussions about what are the needs of the area and obviously of the whole Island.

Deputy R.J. Ward :

May I ask a point to the A.G. (Attorney General)? It is very difficult not to link these 2 propositions together. But if the amendment is rejected and it goes into the sites, it will go towards a 50/50 affordable housing. I know it is the second amendment, but it is influencing the way people would vote. If the amendment from the Constable is rejected and this goes into the site, and I think we do need a ruling on this, would the next amendment, if accepted, mean that the provision of those homes for those with disabilities would go as affordable homes for those with disabilities or does it supersede the affordable homes amendment that we all agreed on, if that makes sense, which it may not. I am being looked at.

The Deputy Bailiff :

Yes, it would supersede it in the sense that the proposition from the Connétable is asking the Assembly to agree that the field should be removed from the list of sites to be zoned for affordable homes. The proposition from the Deputy also asks for removal of the list of sites to be zoned affordable homes. In addition, it asks for the site to be specifically zoned for the provision of purpose- built fully-accessible homes for people with disabilities, so it will no longer be zoned for the purposes of affordable homes, but instead for purpose-built full-accessible homes for people with disabilities.

Deputy R.J. Ward :

From what you have just said, I cannot understand why the second proposition falls if they are removed from the sites for affordable homes. Because the first part of the second proposition is doing the same thing. That is my confusion.

The Deputy Bailiff :

Yes, I was having the same discussion with the Greffier a moment ago, notwithstanding the ruling I have just given, which was consistent with the view that the Greffe had taken to date. I would just like to complete that discussion if I may now. On reflecting on the ruling that I gave earlier, to the effect that if the Connétable 's amendment succeeded then the next amendment 78 could not be debated. I would like to rule afresh on that issue and say that part (a) of the 78th amendment could not be debated, but certainly parts (b), (c) and (d) can. Which means that, regardless of the outcome of this debate on whether or not ..

Deputy R.J. Ward :

Would it help if I propose the adjournment? The Deputy Bailiff :

Yes, perhaps it would. I do not want to close off the potential for Members to vote on this 78th amendment if it is at all possible to do so. But there has been previously a view that it is not possible for the debate to proceed on Deputy Ahier 's amendment if the Assembly adopts the amendment of the Connétable . So, I will reflect on that if I may over the adjournment if the adjournment is now proposed.

LUNCHEON ADJOURNMENT PROPOSED

The Deputy Bailiff :

Seconded? [Seconded] We will adjourn until 2.15 p.m. [12:30]

LUNCHEON ADJOURNMENT

[14:16]

The Deputy Bailiff :

Members will recall, prior to the adjournment I indicated I was going to give a ruling in relation to the effect of the debate on the 12th amendment on the next amendment listed for debate, namely the 78th amendment. If amendment 12 is adopted, the effect will be that the field in question is no longer zoned for affordable housing. In those circumstances, my ruling is that amendment 78 may be debated but only as to parts (b), (c) and (d) of the proposition as (a) will have just been adopted by the Assembly. If amendment 12 is rejected, and the effect of which is that the field remains zoned for affordable housing, then amendment 78 may also be debated but must be voted on as a whole as it would offend Standing Order 20 to vote on part (a) separately. So, whatever the outcome of this debate, Members will be able to debate amendment 78. Does any other Member wish to speak on the current amendment, the 12th amendment? In that case I call upon the Connétable to reply.

4. The Connétable of St. Helier :

I understand that, following your ruling, Deputy Ahier , who spoke first, is now able to support this amendment, which means I can spare him the things I have written down to say about what he said. It is very good because what it means is that, if this field is spared development and we can move on to his amendment, we can of course hope to achieve full accessibility of the new affordable homes that are being built around the Island, which I must say I thought was happening anyway. I thought that in this day and age we were building fully-accessible homes and I thought we had been for some time. But I will absolutely get behind his amendment when we get to it. We also heard from Deputy Gardiner who mentioned our Deputies meetings, and it is true that we meet every month. It is true that not all of the 10 Deputies come. It is true that I am not always aware of their plans. I would like to think that I keep the Deputies fully abreast of what I am thinking about and certainly the Roads Committee, which, as I have said before, meets in open session, is very clear about what it believes is the right thing for the Parish. As I said in my opening remarks, the Roads Committee was fully supportive of keeping this field free from development. The Minister for the Environment made I thought an interesting speech, and we may perhaps have been talking at cross-purposes because we were discussing whether this development is sustainable or not and he said that it is sustainable because of course it is on a good bus route and it is next to a school and so on. I would still argue that building on the outskirts of a large town is unsustainable because you are essentially consigning residents of those homes to car dependency, even if there is a bus service, there will be ample provision for parking, ample opportunity for car use. However, he went on to say that I espoused the view that people can live in flats and do not need cars. As I will be explaining when we get to the parking policy of this plan, that is absolutely not what I believe. St. Helier residents do have as much right to enjoy the benefits of car ownership as everybody else in the Island. That is why I will continue to fight for adequate parking facilities for town residents. That was the main point I think that was raised. As I said, my point about his Assistant Minister, I did not mean to criticise him personally. I was simply raising the problem that we have as a small Island if we continue to lead people to believe that their aspiration in terms of home ownership should be for a 4-bedroom house

with front and back gardens in the countryside, because we cannot go on doing that for ever. That is why it is so important that we commend the benefits and pleasures of town living and, of course, that brings me back to the fact that if you live in town you feel you are going to have to give up your rather nice car. I was going to finish just by reading a quotation from an email I received coincidentally just a couple of days ago about this field. It is a subject that has been raised by other Members in speaking about the fields they are trying to save, but this person wrote to me about their concern: ".. about the possible threat to a large mature oak tree on the edge of field H1219 immediately adjacent to the green lane. For this and other reasons in general I contest the inspector's view that field H1219 has no exceptional ecological value. I have personally picked elderflowers and blackberries from shrubs at the field edge. As I am sure you know, both of these plant species sustain large insect populations, which in turn support birdlife. The oak tree, of course, fulfils these functions too and provides essential canopy protection for both insect and bird populations as well as being as an important sequestrator of carbon and countering pollution from emissions. The destruction of such a large mature tree, quite unusual in Jersey and very unusual in St. Helier , would, in my view, be an outright tragedy as well as being contrary to the States expressed position on climate change and on preservation of biodiversity in the Island. I would like to see everything possible being done to preserve this tree, even perhaps especially if it does turn out that the field is to be lost to development." I would argue that this field, as well as being important for agriculture, as well as being important for the future of Haute Vallée School, is also important ecologically, particularly the hedgerow and the trees alongside it. In concluding, I have indicated already my shift away from an absolute refusal to support building on green fields where they occur in Parish centres and as I support my fellow Constables in their wish to build in their centres, I hope that my fellow Constables, if no one else in the Assembly, will support my wish and the wish of the Roads Committee and the wish of St. Helier parishioners not to see the boundaries of St. Helier pushed out further into the countryside. I would argue that if there is one field in the whole list that we are looking at today and next week that deserves the clemency of this Assembly it is field 1219. I maintain the proposition.

The Deputy Bailiff :

Is the appel called for? The appel has been called for. Members are invited to return to their seats. Those joining the meeting via the Teams link are invited to cast their votes in the chat channel. I ask the Greffier to open the voting for Members in the Chamber.

Deputy M. Tadier :

Sir, I am afraid I have done it again. You can start calling me Deputy Alves , if you like. I have not voted on my ..

The Deputy Bailiff :

It is best if you vote in your own seat, Deputy Tadier .

Deputy M. Tadier :

I will do, Sir. You go away for 2 years, Sir, and then come back. The Deputy Bailiff :

Apparently if you press the abstention vote for Deputy Alves that would be a good thing as well. If all Members have had the opportunity of casting their votes, then I ask the Greffier to close the voting. The amendment has been adopted.

4. Island Plan 2022-25: Approval (P.36/2021) - seventy-eighth amendment: Rezone Field H1219A for accessible homes (P.36/2021 Amd.(78))

The Deputy Bailiff :

We now move to the 78th amendment lodged by Deputy Ahier and I ask the Greffier to read the amendment but not part (a) of the amendment.

The Deputy Greffier of the States:

After the words "the draft Island Plan 2022-25" insert the words "except that - (b) within Policy H6, after the first paragraph there should be inserted the following new paragraph - The following site should be specifically zoned for the provision of purpose-built fully-accessible homes for people with disabilities, and its development for any other use will not be supported: Field H1219, La Grande Route de Mont a L'Abbé, St. Helier (1.20 hectares/6.6 vergées)'; (c) the draft Island Plan 2022-25 should be further amended in such respects as may be necessary consequent upon the adoption of (b); and (d) the Draft Bridging Island Plan Proposals Map Part A - Planning Zones should be amended to reflect the adoption of (b)."

4.1   Deputy S.M. Ahier :

We can now address my amendment to enable H1219 to be used for the provision of purpose-built, fully accessible homes for people with disabilities. In the Comptroller and Auditor General's latest review the percentage of Jersey adults living in residential care settings was found to be considerably higher than that of England.

[14:30]

The review stated that the majority of long-term care scheme claimants from residential settings with occupancy levels in Jersey is significantly higher than comparative data for England. This is clearly outlined in exhibit 14, which demonstrates that the average number of occupied residential and nursing beds in Jersey is more than 3.5 times higher than in England. This seems to indicate that we are disproportionately dependent on residential care homes, which are extremely expensive to fund, and that a new direction needs to be taken. This is one of the primary reasons why I have brought

this amendment. Included in the report at paragraph 70 the Comptroller and Auditor General states that individual health and social care professionals are usually responsible for sourcing appropriate care settings. She explains that they do so "on the basis of the best information available to them at the time". However, in the absence of any data reporting obligations for care homes, we have no way of knowing how many residential care providers might already be approaching full capacity. While individuals remain theoretically free to choose their own care setting, their choice might be in reality quite limited. This lack of availability will, in itself, increase the cost of such care over time and it is reasonable to assert that a new approach is needed if we are to limit any further increases to long-term care contribution. I believe that building more homes for people with disabilities is not only the right thing to do from a social perspective but that it will inevitably save the Island money in the long term. There are other aspects to this scheme that would be of benefit. For example, we must consider those who assist with domiciliary care such as Family Nursing and Home Care staff who do an excellent job but who currently spend a great deal of their own time driving around the Island from Parish to Parish. If 40 or so of the homes they had to visit were in the same area it would make their jobs that bit easier. The domiciliary care market remains underdeveloped on the Island following an historic emphasis on residential care provision. We can draw a comparison with the Office for National Statistics in England, which indicates that 66 per cent of care needs are delivered in the home. In Jersey the figure is 33 per cent of long-term care benefit cases. This is a statistic that needs to be corrected and I hope that this amendment is the first of many such developments in this direction. In the Minister's comments paper he states that the housing needs of persons with disabilities needs to be better understood and prioritised where needs arise. I believe that there is a clear need and that we should address this now by ensuring that we allocate field H1219 to people with disabilities. I make the amendment.

The Deputy Bailiff :

Is the amendment seconded? [Seconded] Does anyone wish to speak on the amendment?

1. Deputy D. Johnson of St. Mary :

I am grateful to Deputy Ahier for bringing this proposition, which opens up an area that I had not previously considered. Certainly, we do need to make as a priority provision of homes for those with disabilities of various kinds. The one aspect that troubles me somewhat is: is it right that these should all be in one particular area? All people, disabled or otherwise, are part of our general community and I am concerned that they should be restricted to one area when they should be enjoying the neighbourliness of those who are fully able-bodied. That is my strong reservation. My general question is, therefore, as to whether in the general application of providing affordable housing, regard is had by the various departments, whether that is Environment, Health, Social Security, to the needs of the disabled and whether that should be built into the equation without having to allocate a specific site.

2. Deputy R.J. Ward :

I follow the previous Deputy and I would say, yes, this sounds like a very good idea and there is certainly a need. The positioning near Mont â l'Alabbé School seems to be a good idea. I think as an Island we have moved towards a more inclusive society and that is a very good thing. I think that what we do need to have are regulations that as a matter of course include disability access for anyone who will be living there for now and for into the future and have some genuine consideration of the needs of people who may have physical challenges that are specific to them. Disabilities are only that if society puts obstacles in the way for many, and housing is one of those issues. So I think my only concern here is about the creation of areas of living that are specifically .. I would like to have seen a much wider inclusion of these building regulations across housing that will be built into the future, particularly affordable housing. It would be interesting to know how this fits into the affordable housing plan. I believe it does not now but it would be specifically created for this

purpose, which is a good idea in many ways. This is a difficult one because is it the right thing to do into the future and will this create more estate specifically built for disabilities and do we want that to be an excluding, if you like, of people or do we want to have a society where we all understand much more about what it is to be a person because we realise our differences as much as our similarities? That is a really important thing to me. I know my experience of schools that are inclusive of disabilities is extraordinarily good for children because they see that difference does not mean people are not exactly the same in that sort of strange juxtaposition of words. So I think it is a consideration I think we should have and I wonder if the Deputy could address that as well.

3. Deputy J.A. Martin:

Today it is going to be a pleasure to follow Deputy Ward , because I think he is nearly there. Do we actually need this? What we do not need is a small village for disabled people. We have Andium who since 2010 at least is building completely adaptable flats and homes. You have all the light sockets are wheelchair accessible; they are very low. The majority have a wet room. Some even have they call them 1½ bedrooms. They charge for 2 bedrooms but they call them 1½ . So, if a person gets a disability they have the wet room, a small studded wall in between that can be taken down to the bedroom and the bathroom and then if you did need a carer to sleep over you have got the small half a bedroom if necessary. There are hundreds all over the place. Why would we put 40- something homes for disabilities? Again, there are so many disabilities. You would have to be building them or definitely refurbishing them for what a person needs. Sometimes as a person gets older there are different things that will be fine when they are 9 or 10 and when they are 14 or 15 they need another. You need something that works but also lots of people are not born with a disability. Something happens, they have an accident. It goes back to where were you brought up, where is your family, where are your friends? "We cannot get you one there. We have got a nice little house for you up there because that is where all the disabled people live, but you cannot stay in your community." Especially for youngsters as well, youngsters like to play out in their communities. We have just been watching the disability Olympics. People do fantastic things now with disabilities. I think the Deputy is trying to do something good. I did not like the comment it is easier if you visit all the people in one area. No. Disability is supposed to be inclusive and we are not going to get it with this. I do understand that at the moment we are not achieving the right split of people being able to stay in their homes with disability. The majority of that is: have we got the workers? There are issues but this is not going to solve that. I am very against this for so many reasons. I think the sentiment was good but, no, I really cannot support it.

4. Deputy J.H. Young:

I think the Deputy 's amendment has caused me to have quite a rethink on this. I think my starting point is that the Deputy 's proposition now proposes to earmark a specific site under Policy H6. Policy H6 I think is worth reading. I was reading it through and there are quite a few words in there that really help, I think, which point towards the sort of facility it is and what the elements of it are and then I think that would help Members make a judgment on whether or not the approach being proposed on this site is correct. But the policy is called "Supported Housing" and it says: "New housing [that is all of it] must meet the diverse, specialised needs of people with disabilities, those requiring some degree of care and vulnerable people in order to ensure equal access to housing and equitable social outcomes." Then they say: "These are best provided in those parts of the Island's built-up area with best access and proximity to local services, facilities and public transport or where people are best able to remain connected to their existing support network of family and friends." I think that is clearly an issue for spatially relating. Then it talks about the move that Jersey is making towards the Jersey Care Model, which moves away from the unsustainable institutional model of care into a modern community-based structure. Of course, the Deputy , in his proposition, did correctly refer to the very high degree of occupation that we currently have in our care homes, which I think are generally occupied by older persons but they are not exclusively so. There are people in care

homes with all sorts of supported needs. I was really quite shocked to find out the occupancy when I was told it was about 99 per cent, so we have very little flexibility in that. So then it talks about: "Extra care is a principle that can be applied to a broad range of housing and which typically offers self-contained living space with access to communal facilities"; there is an interesting element. That flags up questions in my mind: could you put a communal type of facility within such a development if you did it? "Or provide some form of support", and yet the ethos is about providing an enabling environment. A lot of the policy is aimed at persons of my age and above. It does recognise that: "Supported housing can embrace the needs of other sectors of the community outside of the needs of elderly Islanders." But then it goes on, and this is obviously true: "It is difficult to identify and predict the demand for other forms of supported housing." So, in general, of course, it says this should be provided within the built-up area and so on. When you read Policy H6, it is very short and pretty narrow. Basically, it says: "We will not support this unless .."

[14:45]

What I think Deputy Ahier 's proposition is doing is offering us, saying: "Let us have an example of where we might do this, maybe as an opportunity." I would be very surprised if anybody at the moment can predict exactly what that development would look like, how it would be structured and so on. I see that as a downstream task, but if this proposition is approved, of course, this will effectively be in the Island Plan and, therefore, any negatives that come out of H6 as drafted will not apply. Of course, I have also heard what the Connétable said, I think earlier on, and other Members have said: "Well, we should." I am told at the moment the argument I was asked or at least recommended to go with is that the Island's building by-laws, which date from 2007, should be meaning that all homes constructed since that time enable occupants with disabilities to cope better with increased mobility and, therefore, all new homes that we build should be compatible with supported living. But of course, my guess is that the vast majority of homes in the Island where people are do not meet the 2007 building regulations. I would be very surprised if they do; new homes do but not existing ones. Of course, what I see in the policy as drafted before it is amended by Deputy Ahier is we can improve existing buildings to make them better and so on, which is good but this goes the extra mile. I think that does give me grounds to rethink the position. I think the officers' advice to me is right, that we should be doing this anyway on every other site but here we are offered something that maybe, in my mind, helps us take a step in the Island Plan towards a more proactive position in this question of how we provide supported housing for different groups. That is the way I am seeing it at the moment and I personally would have thought a field that is bang on the edge of the area, if we are to lose that field, this seems to be a very positive argument for doing so.

5. Deputy M. Tadier :

On the face of it, it is compelling because I think there is nobody in the Assembly who wants to be seen to be voting against disabled people, as is maybe what is being suggested here. The questions I would ask, though, are a few of the following. First of all I think about future-proofing and I think about whether in fact we are setting up, maybe unintentionally, well-intentioned .. at the same time we have got a false dichotomy in the sense that we are saying: "This is an area where disabled people can live and these are areas where people without disabilities live." What we need to be moving towards, I think, and this is why I mentioned future-proofing, is that you should not have homes that are for disabled people and homes that are for ordinarily able people, if we call them that, because people transition throughout their lives. You might have a temporary or a more permanent disability as you get older following an incident, an accident or just ordinary old age creeping in, which requires you to make amendments. So, the appearance of rooms either as wet rooms or which can suitably take wheelchair access because the doors are wide enough, because there are ramps in place, et cetera, should be hardwired into our planning process for new builds wherever we build them. I have certainly seen so many times in my casework over the years where people have applied for housing,

not because they do not have anywhere to live but because often the private rental that they have - and so I am obviously talking from a Les Quennevais, St. Brelade perspective - something has happened and they say: "We need ground floor access or we need lift access and we can only get it realistically in social housing in Andium." Of course, they apply for that and there is a waiting list and then they are told: "You are going to have to, in all likelihood, move out of the Parish and into St. Helier ." They accept that but it is not their first point of call. I am concerned that this is going to happen again, that we might unintentionally create a ghetto, which I am sure is not the intention of Deputy Ahier and he can probably address that. The other point is that I am just worried that this is not the right location for it. Disability, as we know, can mean so many things and I am just putting myself in somebody else's shoes. I can imagine, for example, if I were wheelchair bound or needed to use a mobility scooter, where would I want to live? Would you want to live at the top of a hill at Queen's Road tucked away by a secondary school? I have looked at the map but I know the area fairly well anyway. What are you going to do? Are you going to go out in your mobility scooter, go round some of the tight bends there? Are you going to do your shopping at Morrisons at the little corner shop or are you going to have to go down roads which is permanently gridlocked and busy if you want to get into town, if you drive - you may not drive of course - if you want to be self-sufficient? Or do you go slightly up the hill? Where do you go if you go in the other direction? Where are your nearest shops? Are you going to go all the way up to the Co-op at Sion almost where there is that new development? I am not sure if this has been properly thought-out or how it is going to work. Have disabled rights groups been consulted in all of this? Is it something that they want? I think the other point is we want mixed neighbourhoods so that you should not simply say: "Okay, this is where the disabled people live in St. Helier. In fact, in a lot of the other Parishes who do not have enough housing, we will put them there as well, they can apply for that." I just think there are quite a few alarm bells for me but certainly the sentiment is right here, what has been flagged up here by the C. and A.G. (Comptroller and Auditor General) and others about we do not want to be shutting people away, forcing them into care settings when they do not need to be there. I do think of a family in St. Brelade in fact who are in a very strange situation, they are multigenerational, and they are having to rent in the private sector. They are quite happy to do that; in fact, they were putting an advert out saying: "We would like to find a private landlord who is willing for us to make adaptations to their house so that I can live there with my mother, my partner and our child." You think you are going to have a really tough job. Luckily, they have also applied for housing through the Gateway. They will probably have a lot more luck with the application through the Gateway to be able to live there because it was said to them: "Why do you not just put your mother in a home and then you can apply to live somewhere on your own in the Gateway? You probably qualify in your own right or indeed your mother might qualify in her own right for some assisted housing through Andium." But they are saying: "No, we want to all live together, we want to be able to .. my partner does not work. Her job is to be at home and she will look after the mother and our own child." You want to make things easy for people so I think it is the right thing to do in that sense but I think it needs a lot more thought as to what kind of communities we are potentially creating here and where we put them. That is a job, and I think a challenge, a gauntlet that the Deputy has laid down for this Government but of course for future Governments to pick up.

6. Deputy K.F. Morel :

I think it is fair to say one of the main reasons I supported the Constable's preceding proposition was so that I could also support this amendment. I have listened to the arguments and most of them so far I have to admit kind of riled me a little bit. I feel like there are a lot of us talking from a position of ignorance and pretending we know what we are talking about. I will just take Deputy Tadier 's there about the ghettoization, which I think is something I mentioned about over-55s living, and yet we voted through yesterday a patch of land in St. John precisely for over-55s sheltered housing, ghettoisation that Deputy Tadier is so strongly against. I have heard people speaking about disability as though disability means you own a mobility scooter and you cannot walk very far when disability

means so, so much more than that. Disability does not just have to be a physical disability, it could be a learning and developmental disability as well. For some people, disability means that they can operate out of relatively ordinary housing in mixed communities quite happily but for other people disability means that living in ordinary housing in mixed communities is really difficult. For some people disability means that they receive abuse from other people in the community and that living somewhere where they feel that they are among others who perhaps understand them a little more provides them with security. Please, Deputy Ahier , do correct me if I am wrong but I think that is part of what this is about, enabling people to have an independence of living in a community which can support them and provide them with security. It is interesting, I was reading about assisted-living communities and research about them in Ireland and it is fascinating. "Disability" is a really poor word, it is that simple. "Disability" is a shockingly bad word because it means so, so much that this one word cannot possibly cover everything that it means. In Ireland, in the research I was reading, people are saying: "I want to go out, I want to mix with people, but I am not allowed to. Even though I am an adult, my parents who are caring for me will not let me because they are too worried about me. I want to live on my own but again I cannot because we do not have the facilities to enable that. I do not want to live with my parents anymore. I am a 25 year-old adult and I want to be out in the community living by myself but until we have somewhere where my parents feel that they can enable me to live or allow me to live, I have to stay living with my parents." These are the sorts of responses that I was reading in this Irish research and it really did make me think about how we discuss this. It is really difficult, there is no easy way, do not get me wrong, but because of the word "disability" it feels like we are trying to class everyone into this one idea that perhaps each of us individually has about disabilities. I was really, really lucky. As a youngster I went to Bel Royal School in St. Lawrence ; it opened I think the year after I was born so it was a really new school when I started in the reception class there. It is absolutely correct that one of the beauties of going to Bel Royal School was that I was being taught among children with all sorts of challenges which I was fortunate not to share those challenges. We had people who had developmental challenges in terms of learning, we had people with physical challenges and, as a result of that, I hope and I feel like I have grown up much more able to just see people as people regardless of what challenge they may face. I think Bel Royal was amazing for that and this was in the 1970s, so it was a long time ago; it was not all unenlightened back in those days. But there is also a reality that, as well as Bel Royal School, we also had to maintain Mont â l'Alabbé School, which was much more specialised on people who faced different challenges. That is because not everyone could go to Bel Royal School, not everyone could mix in that way, it just was not possible for everyone as well. I think we need to listen to those people who know a little bit more about this than us, and I do believe that the proposer here does know a little bit more about this than I do. When he says this would be a very useful facility in Jersey, I really believe he speaks from a position of an experience that I do not have. Well, I have a little experience through Bel Royal School, et cetera, I am blessed, I am lucky I do not suffer from all these challenges. I just think that rather than us saying: "No, it is not convenient right now. No, it is ghettoisation. No, it is not how I think of disability. It is not how I imagined disability should be dealt with" I think perhaps we just need to listen and think to ourselves: "Perhaps my idea of disability does not encompass what disability means and that this is a really good idea which will help people live more independent lives but in a secure and sheltered way that enables them to do so safely and with confidence."

[15:00]

Because at the end of the day, that is probably what most people want, just the confidence to be able to operate within our community and being able to go to a home that enables them to live either fully independently or assisted but something they can call their home and in which they can mix with other people who perhaps understand them better than I would or you would. It may be a really good thing and quite a step forward for Jersey.

The Connétable of St. Helier :

Sorry, could I raise a point of order? I have been considering your ruling on this matter and it does seem to me that what we are effectively doing is debating the same matter which will fall foul of Standing Order 20. We have effectively debated not developing field 1219 and we are now having a debate about developing it. Perhaps you could advise.

The Deputy Bailiff :

Well, I considered that point specifically in my ruling and we are not considering paragraph (a) but (b), (c) and (d) and my ruling remains the same.

The Connétable of St. Helier :

But we are still debating the development of the field that we just voted on a few minutes ago. The Deputy Bailiff :

Yes, but for a different purpose. The overall debate, in my judgment, is sufficiently different in its extent so as to not fall foul of that Standing Order.

7. Deputy I. Gardiner :

One important thing that I agree with the previous speaker, Deputy Morel , is that we need to know what people think. I was very disturbed before we had gone into the break. As you all know, I brought 4 amendments to address and to raise awareness about disability, so now I am grateful to Deputy Ahier to bring this amendment which caught me a bit unprepared because I think we do need to discuss it and it is a really, really important debate. But what I did during the lunch break, I reached out to people from different disability groups to understand their views because I cannot decide for them what is good for them because I do not know, I do not experience it. I cannot tell that I know 100 per cent because most of the people responded to me: "We have not been consulted. We do not know" and also the people who work with disability groups. It is an important point to debate and if I would have probably caught it a bit earlier, I apologise in advance that I did not bring an amendment. One of the things that people raised with me, they said: "It is a really good idea but we would like to have a percentage of the development. Can you bring an amendment that it will be a percentage of the field? Like, from 40 houses, 20 will be and 20 others, to have a mix." I said: "No, I cannot bring an amendment now, this is what we have in front of us" but it has been raised that the preference globally is the percentage of - and I was emailed - developments are accessible; not all disabled people in one area certainly will be something that people will feel strongly about and would like to be involved, people with disabilities, to have any say in where they live and what they look like rather than people talking about how they need to live. Interestingly, it was raised with me also that there are young generations in their 20s that are looking for the community feeling and they will embrace this type of development, maybe not 100 per cent but some of it, to have this community feeling to relate, to understand each other. There are a less younger generation that would like to have families and children and the children do not want to be seen especially from that estate, that it is a disabled- only estate. Again, I would not think about it but it was raised with me and showed me the difference in the age the Deputy completely rightly raised in his report and the Minister addressed its by-laws. Specific examples that I have been given around doorways, currently acceptable standards in Jersey are below best modern practice and guidance. The same with average chair widths without space for your hands on the wheels of a manual chair or space for larger electric chairs or for any other devices that people use, so different medical equipment. So, it is really important that our by-laws will comply with the modern standards, and this is one of the changes that has to be made. Something else was raised with me, it is about the transport. Now apparently it has engaged with LibertyBus as to how many wheelchairs can go on the bus and if, for example, we have people going at 9.00 a.m. from the same place to town and using the bus and will have 5 people who would like to go on the bus with the wheelchair at the same time, it is a challenge. Again, I would not think about it if

somebody did not raise it with me. Apparently, it has been changed. Much more needs to be discussed and sorted to make sure that future homes being considered are going to be right for people and inclusive. Deputy Morel raised some important points, it is not just really the wheelchairs, there are so many different types of disabilities - and I put it in my report - that need to be addressed. I am sure States Members remember the event from late 2021 when David Blunkett spoke about it, the needs, and how disabled people do not have all the same needs. Often people think of ramps and accessible toilets but again we need to understand. My question to the proposer was which disabled groups he consulted, any research any .. I could see what is in the report but it is more than this I think that needs to be done. It is important that we will do it, and it is important because we are having several new developments that we are approving; I would encourage the Minister to include this percentage. I wish I had brought an amendment but I did not. I think it is great that needs are being considered, disabled people need to be part of this discussion about what they need, how they want it and we need to continue to work with our disability strategy group, inclusion group. It is something that is important to discuss but I feel we need to look into all possible angles before we are making blanket decisions.