Build park homes on old greenhouses - ex deputy

Michelle Le Clerc said Guernsey should embrace "radical" housing solutions

Guernsey should build temporary housing such as mobile park homes on derelict greenhouse sites to solve the island's housing crisis, according to a former deputy.

Michelle Le Clerc, former head of Employment and Social Security, said deputies needed to embrace "radical" solutions that included using greenfield sites.

Mrs Le Clerc said it was important Guernsey did not "overbuild" as the aging population would start to decline in "20 years to 30 years maximum", leaving the island "oversupplied" with housing.

She said the idea could be "really unpopular" but that the island should "say to these people with derelict vineries [that] for the next 20 years" they would be used for housing, and after that converted back to greenfield sites.

'Absolutely inevitable'

Mrs Le Clerc said many people in the UK lived in park homes and "some of them are really nice".

She said park homes were "affordable" at between £50,000 and £100,000 plus the cost of infrastructure.

David Piesing, a former advisor to the Guernsey Party, said: "Doing things that aren't radical isn't getting us there, because we haven't got the solutions that tick the boxes."

Mr Piesing said he thought it was "absolutely inevitable" the island should use "lower-grade agricultural" land to build on where possible.

He said it was a "loss of greenness" but not a "loss of useful fields".

He added the island also needed to consider where builders coming to the island for housing projects would live.