Jersey housing campaigner criticises help-to-buy scheme

Jersey's government announced plans for a new £10m help-to-buy scheme

A campaigner says a new help-to-buy scheme on Jersey will not help solve the island's "housing crisis".

The Government of Jersey unveiled plans to put up £10m to help people buy their first home on the island.

Peter Seymour, the director of a Jersey-based loan firm, said the money would help by up to 70 homes.

But Michael Van Neste, who established the Jersey Homes Trust, said helping some families buy a home would stop others getting on the property ladder.

Mr Van Neste, who chaired the trust until his retirement in 2022, said the government should focus on building more homes.

"If you help one family, you must be excluding another family - you're leapfrogging some at the expense of others," he said.

"Yes it is good to help people, but I'm afraid that's not the way to solve the housing crisis."

The BBC has approached Deputy Sam Mezec, Jersey's Housing Minister, for a response.

Shared equity scheme

Discussing the plans earlier this week, Mr Mezec said he wanted to help as many people looking to buy their first home as possible.

He said: "In the next few weeks we're going to be launching a scheme of £10m to support first time buyers to help those people who have saved a little bit of money and could convince a mortgage lender to lend the money but for whom it's just not enough.

"It's a shared equity scheme, it's going to be run by Andium Homes, and it will be for homes out there in the open market and those people who now with a bit of extra support from the government will be able to buy them and will own them outright."