Affordable Jersey Housing - the IMPOSSIBLE DREAM

Below is a 3 part discussion engaging Deputy Rob Duhamel - "Planning Minister", Architect  Derek Mason and Greg Woods of JECOhomes.
The subject is "Affordable Housing"....

 

 

 

This week the JEP reported on the publication of the Inspector’s Report re the Jersey Island Plan Interim Review looking at revisions to the Green Zone etc.

The same two planning inspectors from the UK – Chris Shepley and Alan Langton – who approved the Environment Department’s Draft Island Plan   (just a couple of years ago) almost inevitably endorsed their own previous decisions. So by and large nothing changes – except that the three greenhouse sites are now back on the agenda again for re-zoning for housing developments.

Whether they will ever be built on is not at all certain because Parish opposition is great  and nobody knows if the owners will agree to sell the land for so called “affordable” housing or not and compulsory purchase is not only the very last resort but is also a very long and expensive process.

Extraordinarily, just a day or so before the JEP published details from the Inspectors’ findings there was a Scrutiny Panel hearing - Deputies Hilton and Reed with the Housing Minister Deputy Green and his team. There was no mention of the Inspectors’ Report at that hearing!

Yet it was evident – even to Deputies Hilton and Reed I hope – that the housing development plans of government are the same shambles as always. There are virtually no new houses likely to be built in the very near future – affordable or otherwise – and the 760 families on the “social housing” list with urgent needs will be sleeping in unsatisfactory conditions for many years to come.

And they are only the tip of a very big iceberg because the true housing needs of this Island have never been properly quantified and many – probably most – of those with urgent housing needs with housing “quals” are living somewhere in the “private” sector which has the worst accommodation in the Island.

Of course it is not all bad accommodation and some is available to rent at more reasonable cost – but mostly privately rented units are of poor standard and expensive and totally unsuitable for anybody with disabilities or even children to care for.

That is not to mention the “MISSING 10,000” either. That is the most sordid and disgraceful aspect of the Jersey Housing game – the 10,000 (officially nearer 10,500) working adults (plus children) who do not have “quals” and therefore do not even feature in the existing house provision plans or statistics. Of course this problem makes the 760 look like a very small matter and at long last the Inspectors’ have finally acknowledged my pleadings (and the words of very few others) that something must be done. On page 31 of their 50 plus pages Report they say;

“We register our concern that insufficient priority has been given to the implementation of Policy H9. At any future review/EIP specific attention should be given to the needs of people in this sector [i.e. those without quals] and to the adequacy of Policy H9 and its implementation”

In other words the 10,500 must be planned for. A huge member of new houses and flats are required and for the most part they do not even feature in the existing Island Plan. So never mind about “Population Control” – the real problem is already here and the provision of “Affordable Housing” is a far greater problem than anybody dared suggest. So tear up the Island Plan and start again. Three greenhouse sites will not solve the problem. We cannot go on stuffing more and more houses into the St Helier “ghetto” and the existing “urban” areas. The need is for affordable housing accommodation with space and views, fresh air, parking and peace and quiet – just like people who have a choice build for themselves in the country parishes. Building tomorrow’s town slums should not be a part of any planning agenda.

The video discussion here features Planning and Environment Minister Deputy Rob Duhamel, Architect Derek Mason and Greg Woods of JECOHomes....it was recorded before the Inspectors’ Report was published.

Jersey's appalling human rights record again...but who cares?

We tried to post this on the SSTAG - Social Security and Tenants Action Group - blog but Google seems to have played around yet again with the password.
If anybody knows how to communicate with Google or how to rectify the problem please make contact....

So we are looking at the European Social Charter of the Council of Europe which almost every other place in Europe has signed up to....
but not Jersey of course....
and we doubt if any of the current COM have ever heard of it or care to find out.....

Council of Europe Social Charter….

A recent Daily Mail headline predictably screamed against the Council of Europe
“Double your dole, Eurocrats tell UK”.

For the average reader it would have been just another poke at the EU – but in fact the Council of Europe is not the EU at all but another organisation entirely.

Not that this would bother the Daily Mail too much with its insular view of the world and its policy to oppose any progressive trends – especially those that seek to improve the lives of ordinary working people…

So this latest rant was aimed to ridicule the most recent report from the Council of Europe arising under the European Social Charter which was signed up to by the UK in 1962.

The Charter is the companion document to the European Convention on Human Rights so that alone is reason for the Daily Mail to reach for the reject button.

Unfortunately, the paper is popular in Jersey so many thousands of the local electorate devour its contents and absorb its prejudices along with those so readily published by the JEP.

It was the Anti-Torture Committee from the Council of Europe that visited La Moye Prison a few years ago and issued a report that required Jersey to improve some conditions and practices which potentially caused “human rights violations.”

It’s easy to guess what the Daily Mail might have written about that sort of interference because the violation of rights is just an everyday journalistic tool at the Mail and other “National rags” – as the Press Inquiry and current court cases have revealed…

But unlike the Convention against Torture - Jersey has not even signed up for the European Social Charter – so the latest criticisms against the UK do not apply here.

This does not mean that similar conclusions might not be made about Jersey’s social policies – it’s just that, yet again - nobody is submitting them for independent examination and scrutiny in accordance with international standards.

Of course, there is no “dole” in Jersey just a weird system of “Income support” – but so far as the UK is concerned the Council report said that “Jobseekers Allowance” (for example) should be increased by £71 per week and many other allowances and pensions should be increased by similar amounts too because they are “manifestly inadequate.”

So how would Jersey fare if examined by these “Eurocrats”?

The UK has signed-up for 60 of the 72 articles of the Social Charter and submitted 32 Reports to the relevant Council of Europe Committee since 1962.

These deal with such matters as;

Children and family protection,

The protection of children from sexual exploitation,

Employment and labour rights,

Trades Unions,

Non-discrimination

Education, training and equal opportunities,

Health and Social Security provision

Maternity,

Migrant workers,

Etc.

The whole document is hugely important but like the Convention on Human Rights, is not popular with the current UK Government or other regressive institutions such as the Daily Mail. They would like to scrap any legislation or obligations that interfere with the capitalist priority of making profit.

In Jersey, as already indicated, the European Social Charter has not even been ratified.

It is unlikely that CM Gorst has ever heard of its existence and the Jersey Scrutiny system is incapable of submitting social policies to critical examination.

The Jersey Scrutiny System simply does not have an international obligations dimension – nobody routinely asks if human rights are being complied with!

How might such a complacent attitude be challenged?  Shall any of the candidates in the current St Helier By-Elections or in the whole Island elections in the autumn be proposing to change things for the better?

Jersey Holocaust Memorial Day 2014 - still seeking the baddies?

Once again Holocaust Day has been marked in Jersey with some short speeches, a few prayers and wreath-laying.

For the families of the 21 with Jersey origins who died in the “death camps” there are personal and painful reasons for participating in these proceedings but why members of the government and other VIPs turn out each year is not so clear.

This year we were told that MIND was laying a wreath for the first time in recognition of all the physically and mentally sick people who were persecuted by the “Nazis” and Senator Routier, who has a disabled son, was chosen to represent them.

Quite why his son or any other disabled person was not allowed to lay the wreath was not explained and it may not be relevant because the Senator has had his own health challenges.

Yet he declined to be interviewed for this blog on the ground that it was too emotional and he would not be drawn into the wider deficiencies of the prevailing and active discrimination against disabled persons in Jersey.

Nor would he comment on Jersey’s continuing failure to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of Disabled People or the fact that even Guernsey has now agreed to a whole Strategy on Disability which includes Ratification of International standards and many other progressive measures for that Bailiwick….

Jersey’s Chief Minister, Senator Gorst also declined to be interviewed in order to update last year’s somewhat inadequate Human Rights message as did the Dean who spoke at the indoor ceremony, said a prayer and lit a candle as usual. His brief address included the rhetorical question – What am I doing here?

The Dean meant at the ceremony rather than here on earth (I presume) but if there is any confusion he still refused to be drawn into a discussion in front of my little camera on the ground that he had to leave to attend a meeting.

Strangely he was talking to influential friends in the miserable outside weather long after I had retreated to somewhere warmer but I still failed to find anybody prepared to speak on camera…

It was the “history” aspect that I particularly wanted to examine since a special wreath laying guest was an historian who had only recently discovered that his grandfather from Jersey had died in a prison camp for failing to surrender a radio. His “crime” had been revealed by the Jersey Attorney General and the St Saviour Police during 1943 and so his fate was sealed along with others of the 21 who died because information was supplied by locals to the occupying forces….

It was this omission from the 2014 Memorial proceedings that bothered me because it is evident that more and more information is leaking out from restricted archives and other sources in Jersey and elsewhere. So just when and how will Channel Islanders deal with the more unpleasant facts of collusion? Who will ultimately decide whether the names of collaborators should be made as public as the identities of those who died or were persecuted as a result of their unfortunate actions?

Channel TV a few years ago, named the two sisters who shopped a whole family for listening to a radio during the Occupation. Their selfish action caused a brother and sister to be sent to the death camps and only the man returned.

In other countries there was immediate post-war justice and rough retribution for those who collaborated. Trials are still taking place for those few ancient survivors who have long-concealed war crimes to answer for.

But nothing has been done so far in the Channel Islands.

As always, it is easier to blame somebody else for the ills in society rather than looking too closely at ourselves.

Thus The Germans aka NAZIS are a very convenient label to stick on the wrongs that occurred during and after the 1930s and it is interesting at least that the various speakers listed the victim groups – Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Freemasons, Disabled and Sick, Gypsies, Homosexuals – but in every instance could not utter the word - Communists….

It was the Communists after all who started this particular deathly and discriminatory ball rolling in the 1930s and the rest of the world did little or nothing then because their extermination satisfied a wider capitalist game plan….

Unfortunately, after a brief dalliance with respectability it is the Communists who are once again even more “despised” than all the other groups put together in our Capitalist dominated world.

So, although the speakers such as the Dean claimed that we are ALL children of the same God and that we have to respect the rights even of those that we do not agree with – he and they do not really mean it….

History has a strange ability to reveal itself. Secrets have a habit of seeping into the public domain.

Last year there were 22 names on the Jersey Holocaust roll-call but one has now been removed because the person did not die.

Even a trained historian did not realise that his grandfather was a victim along with so many millions of others from diverse groups and world-wide origins.

The record – officially or otherwise – is constantly subject to revision.

Jersey’s Holocaust Memorial ceremony needs to extend its terms of reference soon if it is to be taken as seriously as the subject deserves.

Bankrupted Jersey Deputies Shona and Trevor Pitman leave the States - but why...does anybody know?

It may seem a bit odd - but in the UK today Nick Griffin, an elected MEP declared that he will carry on until May, in spite of being declared as bankrupt for failing to pay his lawyers fees of £120,000.
Even then he proposes to stand again for election to the EU Parliament...
meanwhile in Jersey Deputies Shona and Trevor Pitman were immediately required to resign when their bankruptcy was confirmed in the Jersey Royal Court for failing to pay lawyers fees and costs....so is there something that needs to be looked at here - just what is the reason for "bankrupts" being barred from serving as elected representatives?

There have been other cases in other countries and a trawl on the Internet reveals some interesting recent and long ago instances of bankrupts in government. The subject certainly needs further examination and discussion in Jersey so the interview that follows with Sam Mezec and Nick le Cornu can serve to start that ball rolling....

That Nick Griffen is a BNP member might be viewed as unfortunate for thoseseeking a liberal view of such matters but his is a timely intervention nevertheless...

What happens now to Shona and Trevor Pitman is not known to this blog but we wish them well and thank them for their efforts in the States and with their electorates.
Some of the other related issues are discussed here too in this video which runs for 21 minutes.

CHOW Xmas, politics, religion and drink - the essential mix for a reforming cocktail?

CHOW - Church House on a Wednesday - the spin-off discussion group from "Business Connect" hosted its final gathering of 2013 in a pub. It was very humorous and entertaining. Jokes were told, Food eaten and beer drunk. Hymns were sung.

What a pity that overtly political meetings cannot be similarly organised in Jersey - politics is fun.......

On the other hand the Xmas message so far as the Christian Church is concerned seems to this observer to become ever more confusing.
The antics of the Church Establishment and the raising of the independence flag over the Dean's activities become ever more bizarre by the day....

So here are a few words from Simon - a prominent supporter and organiser within the CHOW group - expressing his interpretation of the events of 2013.

He embraces the "political" side of the Church but whether this includes the intervention by the likes of  Senator Bailhache in the current "scandal" is not clear here. Perhaps a more sustained and targetted interview should be offered? Any volunteers from the Jersey Church to explain more fully what has been going on and what is proposed for the future?

And do any Jersey politicians have a word to express here on the role of the Church in Jersey and whether the Established C of E brand uniquely deserves funding from public revenues?

Volunteers should just make contact via the comment box....

Do you want Jersey Royal potatoes with your Xmas lunch? Hear what William Church has to say on the matter...

This interview with William Church of the Jersey Royal Company is a follow on from that posted here on 23 March this year.

Then the ground was waterlogged and today the fog was thick and as William Church explains this season was "not pretty" - farmers speak for miserable we suspect - as was last year's.

As before by the time you have watched this video your Jersey Royals will be boiled and ready to eat (about 21 minutes)...if you have any.

William does not want any political intervention and suggests that the growers will battle with the weather and the market to put the spuds into your cooking pot - but we are not so optimistic.

There did not seem to be much political clout at the recent farming conference (which William did not consider worth attending) so who will fight the corner of the industry is anybody's guess.

Sentiments that protect agriculture simply because the industry keeps the countryside looking green are wearing a bit thin - especially since the Green Zone is no longer sacred.

My views that the island population needs many thousands of new dwellings are not supported by those who are already housed thank you very much - but the reality for the 700 families on Deputy Green's urgent need for "social housing" list, or the unknown thousands seeking "affordable" accommodation in the private sector - not to mention the ever lasting 10,000 without housing quals.....


but its Xmas so let's not worry about all that....pass the mint sauce and tuck in...

see http://www.jerseyroyal.co.uk

for the company view on things or look at Jersey Royal Company on Youtube....

Sam Lally's seasonal interview update December 2013

Here (above) is the latest interview with Sam Lally.
This is the fourth such interview published here or on other blogs and we promised from the outset to follow his progress....

The godd news from Guernsey is that the States there has voted to accept the Disability Strategy for that Island (on 27 November).
This followed intense lobbying from the Guernsey Disability Alliance and the "We all matter,eh?" campaign which posted many short interviews with many people with "disabilities".

Sam is a pioneeer in Jersey because he willingly participates on this blog - but of course it should not be necessary. Our States Members will ignore this latest interview just as they have ignored the previous ones and just as they ignored Evelyn's posting here a couple of weeks ago...

Of course its not just States Memebers who are lacking - there are thousands of people in Jersey who have first hand experiemce of disability issues but still do very little to change things - as they are doing in Guernsey - by lobbying and campaigning.

Today the focus will be on the "Soup Kitchen" in the Royal Square and a large number of our elected reps will be warmed by their hot soups in exotic flavours - but the fact is that homelessness is a growing problem in Jersey and more and more people are calling upon the various shelters and charitable groups for help.

In a previous year we linked the demise of "Roseneath" which failed just before Xmas and the somewhat hypocritical purposes of the annual soup kitchen.
Well here we are again. Roseneath is about to re-open so we are told but at Scrutiny last week it was revealed that sixteen "homeless" youngsters appeared from nowhere when two others were found accommodation through a spin-off from the Health service. They will be too young for Roseneath and the whole question of mixing young people with adults was raised - but without any prospect of a solution.

Soup is not the solution . It might help to raise awareness for some but our States Members dragged out from discussing the Budget need to look at the fundamental social problems that Social Security and Health Departments are failing to address. The "get tough" Social Security Minister has lost his way on so many basic problems that affect people in the real world.

Sam Lally's progress is a useful monitor of that process but he seems remarkably reluctant to criticise......

Above are two of the previous Sam Lally interviews. Spot the differences...