Has red tape tied up the IDP?
SOME may feel that the Development & Planning Authority review of the Island Development Plan is ambitious. Others may say it’s not anywhere near ambitious enough.
The ambition is inherent in the clear ‘headline’ figure in the report – the proposals to create a supply of land to meet the island’s housing needs for the next five years, with the way clear to build nearly 2,000 new homes over that period, both private and ‘affordable’.
That figure exceeds the States strategic housing indicator, it’s bold, and it’s proposed it will be achieved by picking at the edges of local centres, rather than creating new ones, which could have been a possibility.
It's notable too that the DPA appears to have left the north, and the west, alone when it comes to new housing allocations.
Also trumpeted as part of the changes, by the DPA president herself, is the removal of ‘bureaucracy and unnecessary red tape’ in the process.
The IDP is now eight years into its 10-year life. Circumstances and demands change over time – would we have had the same concerns about a housing ‘crisis’ in 2016 as we do today? – but one wonders how and why it’s been decided that there was too much bureaucracy in the plan that needed weeding out now?
If, for example, we can lose development frameworks for all but the most complex sites, why were they needed in the first place?