In Mr Matt Waterman’s letter published on the 17 October he refers to my letter where I stated that the responsibility for the allocation of housing licences should be reallocated from Housing to Commerce and Employment (C & E). This was not for the reason that I thought C & E would issue more licences as they should still have to operate under States mandates for population growth. My point is that C & E department is better qualified to assess the economic value to the community of granting that licence rather than a department such as Housing. I believe that the primary mandate and skills of Housing is in the provision of social housing.

 

In fact the lack of any clear format for making a Housing Licence request to Housing Department is clear evidence that the questions that should be answered by an applicant which should justify the issuance or not of a licence are not being requested and therefore considered.  The procedure and responsibilities should support the objective that every licence granted must achieve a minimum return in benefits for the island as a whole. This would include answers to questions on how much tax does the licence applicant’s employer pay in ETI or social taxes, how many employees does it have, how are profits reinvested, how are staff skills constantly improved to foster a highly skilled work force, how much use of air links or sea links is made, how much expenditure is spent locally, how much does that business contribute as a good corporate citizen etc. These and many more are very important answers that C & E is better qualified to validate than Housing. Business leaders could also add expertise and be involved in making this evaluation. This would mean we get better value out of each licence granted not as Mr Waterman fears a Chelsea squad list of licences which as I recall did not give great value for Chelsea either! 

 

It is also a fallacy to believe that business would like to see a free for all in licences. Business leaders value the lifestyle and benefits of living in a lovely island like Guernsey and the vast majority would not like that to adversely change. However we all need to be realistic in accepting that most people want to at least maintain their standard of living but are very reluctant to pay more tax in doing so. To achieve this we need to stimulate an economy to a degree that generates enough extra business to pay the expenses of the island without over stimulating the economy that we are unable to support with labour resource and an adequate social infrastructure such as education, health and housing.

 

I believe Mr Waterman is however probably correct that the ‘business voice is already loud enough for this democracy’.  In the case of the population debate the CGi responded as did other organisations to Deputy M. Lowe, the then Chairman, Strategic Population Review Group as we were asked to do. We also released that response to the Press and C & E. There may be a problem with what happens to these responses. Did they go any further than Mary Lowe and the Review Group and how are the views of business or in fact any respondent passed by the Group to States members making the important decisions? I seem to remember that no comments were made in the States meeting to indicate that industry was strongly supporting limited (not unlimited Mr. Waterman) population growth. I hope we are now not being blamed for a poor or badly informed States decision.

I wonder whether Deputy Falla’s comments mean that he feels views given under current procedures are useless returned in the requested form and business should operate a PR campaign through the media including radio and press or may be, as some States members seem to like to operate States business, through the Editors blog.  I hope that this is not the case and perhaps the States can advise us how we can make our views known if their present system is not working satisfactorily.  

 

We do not expect to always have agreement but a listening well informed States would have our full support.  I still believe as I said in my previous letter ’we can make this happen if we work as a team’.

 

Philip Duquemin

Chairman

Confederation of Guernsey Industry