STATES tenants across the Island are to be given the opportunity to buy their homes for a cut-down price.

After successfully selling some of the regenerated properties at Le Squez and Le Marais estates, Housing intend to extend the scheme to other estates.

The exact whereabouts and the likely cost of the homes will be revealed next week in the Property Plan, which will map out Housing’s plans for all States properties over the next ten years.

Although Housing Minister Terry Le Main would not say exactly what is contained in the report, he did say it would be ‘very different’ from anything Housing have done before and would be ‘highly controversial’.

It is planned that next year will see the start of the refurbishment programme of States Housing, with £6 million already being set aside.

According to the States Business Plan there have been funding constraints and an increased demand on the department’s revenue to provide funding for the rent subsidy schemes, which has led to inadequate investment in the maintenance of the social housing stock.

The report says that to address this problem, significant investment must be made in refurbishing the stock, and the department should be allowed to retain a large proportion of its income for maintenance purposes.

Senator Le Main said: ‘The Property Plan has been discussed this week with the department, my assistant minister and myself, and it will be released next week.

Until then, I cannot really discuss the details of what we are proposing.

‘But what I can say is that it will be highly controversial and will look at the future of States housing for the next ten years.

Also, this will be a departure from what we’ve done in the past and hopefully good news for a lot of people.’