‘Triangle field approval shows no room for common sense’
PLANNING has become a tick-box exercise, with no room for common sense, Vale constable Richard Leale has said.
He was responding to the news that planning permission has been granted to build two houses on a triangular field on Braye Road.
It follows a long planning process, where larger schemes were proposed and rejected. Last week permission was finally granted, after a planning appeal tribunal overthrew the Development & Planning Authority decision to reject the scheme.
Hillstone Guernsey Ltd is now planning to start work on the build later this summer. Vale parish officials have been concerned about the project.
Mr Leale said that the latest decision demonstrated a lack of common sense.
‘Planning has been tied up in knots creating a tick-box procedure leaving out the most important box – common sense – or actually leaving the office and going to have a look,’ he said.
He noted that former Island Development Committee president Tom Ogier had regularly rejected applications for being incongruous.
‘Perhaps Tom Ogier’s approach wasn’t quite right, but it was a decision made on the ground,’ Mr Leale.
DPA president Victoria Oliver, who had voted in favour of the project going ahead, has since said that while the loss of green field was a shame, allowing the build fitted with the planning policy.
Mr Leale said that before the island’s planning laws were changed, politicians had more power to reject applications for ascetic reasons, but now the pendulum has swung too far the other way.
That meant the DPA had no choice other than to approve something because the Island Development Plan of 2016 stated it could be built on.
He added that the previous States voted to leave the IDP unchanged, despite the many criticisms of it.
Without the IDP earmarking the site for development, Mr Leale said, the developer would never have paid £420,000 for a field otherwise worth £30,000.
‘Our new chief minister was voted in on the basis of saying that enough was enough development for the north of the island, but now he remains silent,’ said Mr Leale.
The Vale douzaine will be writing to Deputy Oliver, inviting her to meet members, outline the authority’s approach to development in the north of the island and take questions on that.
