Is This Really About Cutting Red Tape?

The new Planning Minister has suggested Jersey's minimum apartment size rules could be revisited as part of an effort to reduce red tape and make it easier to deliver new housing. It sounds like a sensible objective. Few people would argue against removing unnecessary bureaucracy if it helps tackle Jersey's housing shortage. But there is one obvious question that deserves answering. How does allowing smaller apartments reduce red tape?

What is red tape?

Red tape normally refers to unnecessary administration. It means forms that do not need completing, duplicated processes, lengthy approvals, unnecessary delays or regulations that create work without delivering meaningful public benefit. Removing red tape should mean someone has less paperwork to complete, fewer approvals to obtain or less bureaucracy to navigate. Changing the minimum size of an apartment appears to do none of those things.

What actually changes?

Today, a planning officer checks whether a proposed apartment meets the minimum standard. If tomorrow the minimum size changes, the planning officer still performs exactly the same task. The architect still draws the plans. The developer still submits an application. Neighbours are still consulted. Planning officers still assess the proposal. The committee still makes its decision. The only difference is that instead of checking one number, they check another. The process remains exactly the same. So where is the reduction in bureaucracy?

A Change in Policy, Not Process

That doesn't necessarily make the proposal wrong. Government is perfectly entitled to decide that apartments should be smaller. That is a planning policy decision. But it is different from reducing administrative burden. If ministers believe current apartment standards are too restrictive, they should simply say so. Presenting the change as cutting red tape risks confusing two very different ideas.

So Who Benefits?

If planning officers are doing exactly the same amount of work, someone else must be benefiting. Allowing smaller apartments could enable developers to fit more homes onto the same site. It could improve the financial viability of developments. It could increase the value of development land. It could, if the market behaves as intended, reduce the price of some homes by increasing supply. But those are economic benefits. They are not reductions in bureaucracy. The important question therefore becomes:

Who receives the greatest benefit from relaxing the standards?

Is it: 1. first-time buyers through lower prices? 2. developers through increased profitability? 3. landowners through higher site values? or a combination of all three? Without evidence, nobody can honestly claim to know.

The Evidence Government Should Publish

If apartment standards are to be reduced, Government should be able to answer a few straightforward questions. 1. How many additional homes would actually be created? 2. What reduction in purchase prices is expected? 3. How much additional profit would developers make? 4. Would land values increase? 5. Which administrative processes would disappear? If the answer to the last question is "none", then this proposal is not really about reducing red tape at all. It is about changing what developers are allowed to build. There is nothing inherently wrong with making that policy choice. But the public deserves to understand exactly what is changing, why it is changing, and—perhaps most importantly—who stands to gain the most.

Lobbi.