Sir Mark Boleat: Housing Saviour or Housing Pariah?

The policy suggestions coming from Alliance, presumably under the oversight of their Leader and head of policy development, are something of a curates egg. 

There is, to be fair, some good analysis on freeing up land, and it is good to see the consideration of brownfield sites (such as decaying greenhouses) rather than building on green land. The rental policy is also very good,  limiting social housing to a maximum percentage of market rentals - although in fact Reform also have pretty much the same policy in place. In fact there is almost certain to be a degree of overlap between the parties.

Nevertheless, there are issues that may be more controversial and single out Alliance (at present) as different, and it is worth reflecting on Sir Mark Boleat's previous policy on housing, from his "past life" in London, as some of that can be seen influencing his ideas here:

Car parking and Building Heights

"Supply should be increased by relaxing requirements for car parking spaces and height restrictions"

"Currently, driveways, roads and car parks comprise 7% of the land area of Jersey. There are 145,000 vehicles registered in Jersey, an average of more than three per household. Since 1966 the population has increased by 60% and the “car population” by 220%.The provision for car parking has got out of hand."

"There is a slight disconnect between the planning policy on parking and then effectively the control element of the Planning Department that then goes to enforce that, for instance a requirement for 0.7 parking places per flat. What we would say to you on that is that we spend an enormous amount of money creating parking spaces. I will give you an example, La Collette flats where we have spent £15 million effectively on a substructure to create substantial numbers of parking places, which will not be required by the residents living there."

I would love to know where he gets the data for "which will not be required by the residents living there.". People going to large out of town supermarkets for large weekly shopping (less expensive that a corner shop), tend to use cars - has Sir Mark tried to stock up for a family of four by a bus trip? Moreover, there is also the use of car spaces for visitors, friends, family, and potentially doctors.

I would have more sympathy for this policy if it applied equally fairly to "luxury developments", especially those in more rural locations, but I suspect somehow that it does not. I would have even more sympathy if the members of the Alliance party were pledged to attend States sittings by using bicycles or buses to get in and out of St Helier, but I also have suspicions this may not be the case either.

I would also be keen to know how many of the 7% driveways land area comes from expensive houses with large driveways, because obviously that consumes more land area per house than smaller properties. I've seen private houses with drives that can accommodate at least 6 cars. 

In fact, the whole question of where this data comes from and how accurate it is needs to be considered. I am not aware of any island wide land survey which gives the land area in use by driveways, and I suspect some kind of "guestimate".

On height restrictions, more later.

Planning

"The current planning system is hugely costly, causes significant delays to important projects and cannot be justified given the inability of the current system to cope with the current level of applications. Significant reforms are needed to ensure that applications are dealt with efficiently and effectively, with the interests of developers, those affected by the development and the wider community all being properly considered."

What concerns me here is exactly how the planning system is to be adjusted, and whether this will bypass democratic constraints.

What concerns me was that when in London, in 2017, the Evening Standard published three critical letters in response to a piece they ran about Sir Mark Boleat’s ‘Housing & Finance Institute’ calling - as they saw it - for the planning process to be further loaded in favour of developers and demanding the bulldozing away of democratic procedure. 

As the Standard reported, "In a radical set of proposals, Sir Mark said that residents must have their influence hugely scaled back by excluding councillors representing residents affected by a planning application from the decision on whether it should go ahead."

This is what he said:

"The really big problem is the planning system. Planning committees are made up of locally elected representatives, and elected members need to be responsive to the views of their constituents. Planning applications invariably meet strong resistance from neighbouring residents who put pressure on their elected representatives. There is accordingly a presumption against development"

"More land must be made available for house building and then built on at higher densities."

The Case of London

It is interesting to consider how Sir Mark's new policy seems to be at times at odds with that he pursued with the City of London (building on the Green belt, whereas Jersey's green zone is sacrosanct), where he had quite an outcry against him, and at other points fits very closely, as can be seen below. 

Three arguments seem to have come into play: (1) an accusation by Sir Mark that those opposing a development were "selfish middle class nimbys" (a rather polemic piece of ad hominem derision!), (2) a decision to create a proportion of luxury flats to those affordable that seems very much like the JDC (in the recent debate over the proportion of affordable homes in their development) and (3) the "go for broke" on heights and density of buildings. 

Would any of this decision making process come into play locally should the Alliance party gain dominance in the States?

One of the letters from Ms Emma Matthews noted that:

"I live in Bowater House in the Golden Lane Estate, a council estate, directly opposite a proposed development of 99 luxury flats. This has just been granted planning permission by the City of London, despite 182 objections from local residents. Residents in Bowater House are not ‘selfish middle class nimbys’. We objected because the new development replaces a police section house which provided accommodation for 110 police officers for 55 years. We wanted the building to be either renovated to continue to provide police accommodation – so necessary for officers to live on the job to deal with the increased terrorist threat or to have been replaced with more key worker flats or social housing. There are hundreds of luxury apartment in this area which are not selling. We need homes for Londoners, that Londoners can afford to buy or rent, not another block of unneeded and unnecessary luxury investment flats. The City is one of the richest boroughs in the country, it didn’t need to sell this site and could have used it to provide much needed homes for key-workers. This is what local people and businesses wanted."

"Sir Mark Boleat was on the Police Committee and Property Investment Board during 2014 and 2015 when the decision was made to both close and sell the Police Section House. He also voted to Approve this development, speaking out in its favour. This development should have 33 affordable homes but contains none and the off site provision will only provide 14 affordable flats instead of the 66 required by the Local Plan. It is being marketed in Hong Kong as The Denizen, a block of luxury apartments, containing a private cinema and marble floors."

Another letter by Charles Humphries (of The Greater Lombardy East Residents Association, GLERA) noted that:

"His team plans to extend our Estate with a social housing scheme two and a half times the maximum density and three times the height that planning policy permits, with no outdoor space, no playground and a tower block with a Grenfell-style single escape staircase. As local residents we stand up for getting decent, good quality social housing on the site, not repeating the disastrous mistakes of the 1960’s."

"Weakening planning rules creates opportunities for developers and house builders. Sir Mark’s networking/lobby group, the loftily titled “Housing and Finance Institute” brings them together with financiers and local authorities, as they put it “building relationships between capable councils, businesses and investors who want to do more”.

And in conclusion...

Is the Alliance Housing policy a good one, or has it certain defects, which are on the hinterland between what is stated explicitly and what is implicit, as we see above? 

I think there are questions about parking - has a proper survey been done asking potential residents what they want? - about the density of developments, in particular with regard to height, and with the suggestion that the planning process is "cumbersome" and must be subjected to "significant reforms", when we can see from the situation in London that meant weakening democratic constraints.