Total number of units of residential accommodation and number of habitable rooms in schemes where planning permission has been granted, but not yet commenced development as at 31st May 2011

1240/5(6382)

WRITTEN QUESTION TO THE MINISTER FOR PLANNING AND ENVIRONMENT BY DEPUTY J.A.N. LE FONDRÉ OF ST. LAWRENCE)

ANSWER TO BE TABLED ON MONDAY 20th JUNE 2011

Question

Could the Minister identify –

1. the total number of units of residential accommodation and the total number of habitable rooms contained in schemes for which planning permission has been granted, but which have not yet commenced development, as at 31st May 2011?
2. the  highest  number  of  units  of  accommodation  held  by  any  one  developer (including associated entities) in respect of the aforementioned schemes?

Would he provide that information (by developer) for the top 5 developers/applicants? Answer

Net housing supply figures are collated at the start of each calendar year. As part of those figures the number of residential units with planning permission which have not commenced, or have commenced and not been completed is assessed. However these figures are balanced against the loss of units which may occur to allow a development for example when a dwelling is demolished to allow the construction of two dwellings the resultant figure would be a single extra dwelling provided.

Provisional figures from the Department's records show that, at the start of 2011, there were outstanding permissions for some 1550+ new homes (net figures) on sites where development had yet to commence.

The approvals are for net gains of some 368 houses and 1183 flats.

A breakdown of these net figures by type and size is as follows:

Outstanding Permits for Houses yet to commence @ 1st January 2011 (net figures), by size

Outstanding Permits for Flats yet to commence @ 1st January 2011 (net figures), by size

Outstanding Permits for Total yet to commence @ 1st January 2011 (net figures), by size

Obtaining the gross figures of outstanding permissions would involve a significant level of investigation. These figures are not kept as a matter of course at the current time as it is the net figure which is far more important in establishing housing supply. In the time scale of preparing an answer to this query it will not be possible to obtain those figures.

In accordance with the Planning and Building (Jersey) Law planning permissions run with the land  to  which  they  relate.  As  such  records  of  which  developer  has  control  of  the  most unimplemented  schemes  or  the  most  uncommenced  units  of  accommodation  is  not  readily accessible. Further, the department has no records of land transactions following the granting of permissions which involve the transfer of ownership and this factor in itself may significantly influence  any  such  statistics.  As  such  the  information  requested  can  neither  be  practically provided within the timescale of the response to the question nor can it be reliably provided from any information held by the department.