From Michael Van Neste, chairman, Jersey Homes Trust.
IN the 15 years I have been chairman of the Jersey Homes Trust, I have faced a number of challenges from politicians opposed in principle to privatisation.

The battles that were fought were conducted without personal malice and I could always rely on the Jersey media, especially the JEP, to report both fairly and with a good understanding of the subject. Your page 5 article on 30 May was a sad departure from those high standards.

The article is littered with inaccuracies. Firstly, Brunel Management does not have a maintenance contract with JHT. Nobody does. So, there simply does not exist any contract ‘potentially worth millions of pounds’. Brunel does not ‘carry out all the maintenance’ for JHT. Brunel does not carry out any maintenance at all. There are no such ‘lucrative maintenance contracts’, for Brunel or anybody else.

It was stated that the JHT ‘have been given large amounts of States housing’. Not so. The JHT has developed virtually all of its 738 units of housing, an outstanding achievement.

The JEP has access through my annual report to a great deal of the information that Senator Shenton and Deputy Power are apparently seeking. That report is also available to everybody through the JHT website. It contains the results of a benchmarking exercise which confirms that JHT’s operating costs are only half the average operating costs, on a pound for pound per unit basis, of UK housing associations, another outstanding achievement in this high-cost environment.

I am quoted as saying: ‘Brunel’s charges for maintaining the properties are a fraction of what the Housing Department would charge’. As I make clear, Brunel does not charge for maintaining any properties. In any case, I absolutely deny that I made any comparison with any ‘charges’ (or for that matter any expenses) incurred by the Housing Department. I am always very careful to make clear that the performance benchmarking of the JHT is not to be compared with the work of the Housing Department.

Brunel is, in fact, the property manager of JHT, also responsible for a number of administrative services. It was stated that Brunel has only tendered for its services once. Wrong again. Over the years, Brunel has taken part in three tendering exercises, the most recent for the Waterfront housing scheme. This was conducted by the Housing Department itself. Brunel won the contract fairly and squarely.

Previously, the management of the Belle Vue housing estate was put out to tender and Brunel won that contract too. Clearly it is advantageous for JHT to have all its properties and tenancies administered together, and the trustees have since negotiated with Brunel a challenging and comprehensive service-level agreement at very keen rates, which are below the guideline rate in the Department’s own literature, and well below industry levels.

It was hardly surprising that Brunel should have been asked to tender. It was because of my background in property development and management that I was asked to take on the formation and chairmanship of JHT in the first place.

You quote Sean Power, the Assistant Housing Minister, as having said that ‘the department have never seen the Brunel accounts despite asking several times’. If Deputy Power did make that claim, I can state with absolute certainty that Brunel has never been asked for its accounts by Deputy Power, by the department, or by any governmental body (other than for income tax).

Deputy Power has surely been misquoted, as I made this matter clear to your reporter when he spoke to me earlier in the week. This atrocious piece of reporting, in the context of this appalling article, is intended to convey the impression of a cover up.

Deputy Power goes on to say (reportedly) that ‘the Housing Department has absolutely no control over the trusts’. Wrong again. The JHT is very well regulated under the terms of a legally binding agreement between the States and the JHT, which was put in place pending the long awaited statutory regulations.

He is also quoted as saying: ‘That would not be allowed to happen in the UK’. Knowing so much about housing trusts, he omitted to mention that trustees can be remunerated in the UK. I and my colleagues in Jersey perform all our services without payment.

The constitution of the JHT has been very carefully framed to meet the needs of this small and unique jurisdiction. It has performed wonderfully well over 15 years. I am not about to start apologising for that.

Deputy Power should also know that quangos in the UK enter into very similar arrangements for remunerated services and that JHT’s arrangements are a model of propriety, transparency and correctness.

Not for the first time, Deputy Power seems to be strangely out of step with his own minister. He should enjoy access to departmental information that should enable him to be a team player. Is there a problem here?

Senator Shenton, chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, has asked a question in the House about Brunel’s accounts. Like Deputy Power, he has not troubled to ask me anything. I can answer it here and now.

The independent auditors of JHT, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, have unfettered access to the offices, books and accounts of Brunel for the purposes of the audit and the JHT accounts are submitted annually to the Treasury and Housing Ministers. Deputy Power, therefore, should enjoy unrestricted access to the accounts of JHT.

Senator Shenton is also, reportedly, planning to ask about the nomination rights of the Housing Department over JHT homes. So why does he not ask me, or the Housing Minister, or the Chief Housing Officer, all these big and important questions?

He would receive immediate, full and satisfactory answers. That way he would get no publicity. Senator Shenton should know, better than most, that you can spend years in politics, jumping up and down, but achieving little of lasting value.

Finally, Senator Shenton also (reportedly) states that the arrangement between JHT and Brunel ‘would not be allowed anywhere else’, again inferring malfeasance. Attention has been drawn to this arrangement every year through my annual reports, sent to all the media (yes, including the JEP). It is fully compliant with our constitution and regulations, and with good practice.

Is he suggesting that successive Housing and Finance presidents, over many years, did not do their jobs properly? Does he think that banks would lend £100 million to a body that was not regulated and operated with total and scrupulous openness and professionalism?

Does he think that the States would have provided millions of pounds in grants and subsidies to anything other than a model of correctness?

Why can’t he just let me get on with the job of helping to create and manage hundreds of homes for Jersey people? Why has he so little respect for actual and honest achievement?
48-50 New Street.