Last month, Guernsey’s Development and Planning Authority published the results of its review into the Island Development Plan.

The review coincided with the publication of an interview with renowned architect Peter Barber in The Sunday Times Magazine (titled ‘Modern Houses Don’t Have to Be Rubbish’). Barber has plenty of provocative things to say about the UK’s housing crisis, and his ideas make for interesting reading in light of our own here in Guernsey.

Barber is famous for his distinctively stylish and characterful housing developments. As Francesca Angelini writes in the interview, ‘Where most new-build properties are drab, lightweight, identikit flats or cul-de-sacs that fall into the category of eyesore, Barber’s are the opposite. He creates modern houses in which people actually want to live.’

In response to this observation, Barber offers a succinct summary of his philosophy: ‘We need housing. Let’s do it nicely.’

Guernsey needs housing, too. So what can we learn from this master of the modern affordable home?

Private developers, partial owners

In its report, the DPA proposed to expand three local centres to include six new sites for affordable housing. Private development would be allowed on these sites provided at least 80% of units were social housing. While some, such as the local branch of the Institute of Directors, welcomed the proposals, there was also pushback. Deputy Steve Falla, for instance, was ‘dumbfounded’ by the suggestion of building on greenfield sites, rather than on existing derelict greenhouse sites.

Since then, DPA President Deputy Victoria Oliver has sought to assure concerned parties that any greenfield housing developments would not negatively impact biodiversity. ‘If anything is negative,’ she is quoted as saying, ‘it won’t get through the planning process so biodiversity should not be a problem within the housing sites.’

What would Peter Barber make of all this? For him, the central problem is not the planning system, but the fact that governments lean on private developers to provide social housing. ‘Developers don’t have an interest in solving the housing crisis,’ he says in the Times interview. ‘They maintain high prices by the shortage of housing. They’re answerable to their shareholders. The public good isn’t a factor.’

One of Barber’s proposed solutions is to end the Right to Buy scheme first introduced in 1980. He’s not alone: Right to Buy has been widely criticised for prioritising home ownership for some over access to safe social housing for the many, leading to net losses of social housing every year.

Guernsey has never introduced a direct local equivalent to Right to Buy. The Guernsey Housing Association instead offers partial ownership to some tenants, with 247 of its 1032 properties currently listed as being partly owned by their residents. These part-owners pay a discounted rent on the part still owned by the GHA.

The rent control dilemma

Beyond the GHA, renting a house in Guernsey is more expensive than ever. In February, the BBC reported that the average rental price for Local Market properties went up by 11.4% to £1,922/month in the last quarter of 2023.

This would no doubt interest Barber, who believes rent controls should be introduced in the UK. He might also be interested to know that Guernsey actually enacted strict rent controls in the post-war period, and currently has a Rent Control Law. However, that law exists only ‘to ensure rents are fair for both tenants and landlords in the event of a disagreement.’ In other words, it bears little resemblance to the kind of rent control that enabled Monica and Rachel to pay $200/month for their massive Manhattan apartment through all ten seasons of Friends. 

Rent control like that – the kind currently found in cities including New York, San Francisco and Minnesota, and that Barber supports – places a limit on the amount a landlord can charge for leasing a home or renewing a lease. Unpopular among landlords for obvious reasons, its benefits include encouraging long-term tenancy and preventing local people being priced out by gentrification.

An independent study recently found that the average rent in Guernsey was equal to 56% of average earnings – considerably higher than the recommended figure of 30%. In 2022, when then-Chief Minister Peter Ferbrache hinted at the possibility of local rent controls, the response from other politicians was largely negative. Several deputies spoke out against it, insisting that the answer lies instead in increasing the supply of affordable housing.

More recently, blame for skyrocketing rents has been placed at the feet of subsidies for key workers in the public sector. The subsidies – intended to make Guernsey a more affordable and enticing location for much-needed teachers, nurses and so on – have led in some cases to incoming States staff offering to pay higher rents than landlords are asking. While acknowledging this issue, Deputy Lindsay de Sausmarez ruled out rent control for Guernsey, describing it as ‘not on the agenda’.

Looking ahead

So if Guernsey has no interest in Barber’s rent control idea, what can the island learn from him? If it was up to Barber, partial ownership schemes like the GHA’s would be scrapped. He favours a return to the housing policy platform that was dominant between the end of WWII and the late 1970s – one that would involve major programmes of housebuilding for council rent, including making use of empty and underused properties in post-industrial and brownfield sites.

Some of this chimes with recent local commentary – and policy. The recent scrapping of GP11, which required a portion of all new private housing developments to be allocated to affordable housing, speaks to a broad acknowledgement of that policy’s ineffectiveness. And whatever one thinks of the specifics of the IDP review, it does at least hint at an acceptance that the provision of affordable housing might ultimately be the responsibility of local government – something with which Peter Barber would heartily concur.

And what about Barber’s famously stylish designs? Architecturally interesting, aesthetically pleasing affordable housing is surely something we can all get behind. What remains to be seen is whether the complex array of factors at play in the Guernsey housing market will make such a thing possible in the near future.