As you may or may not be aware, I have been in talks with the Housing department with regards to the granting of housing licences within our industry. There is a lot of confusion in the industry as to how these licences are granted and I am currently working to get this area simplified and passed on to all operators so we ALL know where we stand. Traditionally, hotel licences are granted based on the "star" and service levels of a particular hotel which seems pretty straight forward but restaurants are a little more problematic.
Due to the nature of the restaurant business, a great many "variables" are taken into consideration from style of food, number of covers, "quality" etc. but as you can understand, there are no real bench marking that can be placed on a restaurant due to the styles of operation.
The introducing of a grading scheme similar to hotels would not work as how would you grade a restaurant doing 300 covers a day at £8.00 per person against a restaurant doing 30 covers a day at £80 per person?.
Two other issues that have been raised by a number of people
1. The length of licence issued within the non essential category. 9 months or 3 years. People have asked if this can be changed ie 4 years, but as the law currently stands, these time periods are fixed and are there to break a persons length of residency so that they are not in a position to claim residents rights on the island. As this, from my understanding is "law" and not "policy", there will be no movement on this issue housing law is currently being revued with ANY changes taking place in 2009.
2. Open Market staff houses - why do they need a housing licence? - Again more of a law than a policy change at this stage so again no real change due in the short term.
Although the law may well be reviewed then, it does not mean that it will be changed as the residency restrictions will still be an issue.
This is a complicated issue and I am sure that any policy changes made will not suit all but I am not sure we ever could devise a policy that would keep everyone happy.
The key areas to keep in mind are a) the rules in place are there to protect local market homes for local people and b) control the number of migrant workers accruing full residency rights.
This may be slightly simplistic but as I understand it, this is the jist of the situation.
If anybody thinks that this is incorrect, please let me know.
As soon as I have more information for you I will be posting it ASAP