New Housing Minister plans to stop sell-off

Wednesday 9th June 2010, 2:58PM BST.

Housing Minister Sean Power.

THE sale of States housing to fund refurbishments will stop ‘sooner rather than later’,
according to the newly appointed Housing Minister, Sean Power.

The Deputy won a three-way contest to succeed Housing Minister Terry Le Main in the States yesterday, beating Chief Minister Terry Le Sueur’s nominee Deputy Jackie Hilton in a run-off vote by 28 votes to 20.

Senator Alan Breckon had earlier dropped out of the running after securing just 14 votes on the first ballot.

Deputy Power says that in the 18 months remaining until the end of his term as minister he plans to:

• Give the Housing department financial independence.

• Stop the sell-off of social housing to fund maintenance.

• Regain control of the Population Office from the Chief Minister’s department.

• See Wednesday’s JEP for full story.

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1
Mogit

June 9, 2010 at 6:22 pm

Stop the sell off by all means – but maintenance is not a word that features in the Housing Dept vocabulary at all. In actual fact housing need to have someone at the helm that is well versed in property management, sorry Sean that isn’t you!!!

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2
Cathy

June 10, 2010 at 1:14 am

So the budget for maintenance is coming from……??

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3
Helen Back

June 10, 2010 at 12:48 pm

Will the control of the population office help us! they wont even give out the correct information on numbers,and wont allow for a census Freedom of information act! hmmmmm, whys this.

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4
Jerry

June 10, 2010 at 4:06 pm

An interesting set of three objectives, by the new Minister – particularly because the three items appear to be mutually contradictory.

If the Housing Department is given ‘financial independence’, the newly-independent agency will presumably try to address the maintenance issue; and where are the maintenance funds to come from, if not from sales? A financially independent organisation would be bound to try to improve the quality of the portfolio, by selling some housing stock.

What is the point of wresting back control of the Population Office from the Chief Minister’s Department, if the Housing Minister is then only left with this one item to look after?

It would be possible to argue in favour of each of the objectives separately. Bundled together like this, and with an apparently critical report imminent, they look rather like a hasty attempt to distance the new Minister from the past, and to highlight the fact that the Housing Minister is not currently responsible for Housing Law enforcement.

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