Is this undemocratic? I don’t think so

Hopefully the two are not linked, nor, I hope, is the review an excuse to bring the planning function under closer political control.

I am not commenting on any aspect of the actual St Martin’s planning issue, I’m not close enough to it to do so.

If I recall correctly, an application rejected by the planning committee was later approved by the appeals panel, resulting in some claiming the decision to be undemocratic – presumably, wanting deputies to have the final say.

What surprises me is to hear the same lack-of-democracy statement from sitting deputies. Such statements indicate to me they are either grasping at straws or do not understand the planning process.

To explain what I mean, we need to recall the previous planning regimes. As a teenager in the 1970s I can remember the then-IDC turning up at home to consider a planning application. A bus load of politicians arrived, milled around, some spoke to my parents, others not. Those who did offered differing, often contradictory, opinions or advice.

I remember my father afterwards saying he was none the wiser for the visit.

That system was based around the personal opinions of the members of the IDC at the time.

I am not criticising those members, they operated within the system that was in place, but it did lead to some odd decisions and a lot of public dissatisfaction over a lack of consistency.

For a decade, I was a civil servant. Often we would end the week with a drink in a local pub, sharing stories of the week. I recall one week when an officer of the former IDC joined us, explaining his amazement at a political planning decision.

An application for dormer windows had been rejected by the committee. The reason for the rejection, and I kid you not, was that one of the politicians knew the applicants and did not think they could afford to have the works done.

An astounding and inappropriate reason to reject a planning application, but an example of what can happen with a system based around political opinions and the final decision resting with politicians.

Presumably, had that specific politician been absent, the plans may have been approved.

We now have a policy-driven planning system, at the very top of which is the States Strategic Land Use Plan, which sets the overall strategic parameters for the planning process. This is quite a comprehensive document which took a few years to develop. I remember, since I was part of the group which produced it.

This is the plan which was approved by the States and among other things it removed the concept of the rural and urban area plans and created the concept of village centres to allow limited development in what was the rural area.

Below this is the level of the detailed development plans, which are the main planning guidelines and policies which form a quasi-legal planning framework. These were debated and approved by this Assembly.

The fundamental concept behind the current system is that anybody who is considering any development, big or small, can review the policies and know what can or cannot be included in the plans for them to comply with the polices in order to gain approval, and for the decision-making process to be based on the States-agreed policies, rather than the opinion of those politicians who happen to be on the committee at the time.

It is impossible for such policies to cover all eventualities, so there is an element of discretion, and therefore politicians are involved in making some decisions – notably the larger, more significant ones. This is not a problem as long as they do act in a quasi-judicial manner within the policy-based framework.

The appeal process is to an independent non-political panel. The logic for this is to ensure decisions are policy-based and not politically-biased.

The example I gave was 20 years ago, so could it happen now? Well it could – and nearly did.

I attended the public hearing relating to the application for the Ladies’ College extension. During the hearing one deputy raised no comments or questions in relation to the appropriateness of the design, only questioning whether there was any increase in car parking. When told there was no increase, the deputy commented that any increase would have resulted in a vote against the application. Against an application which was within all of the policies.

So, returning to the original criticism – is having a panel undemocratic because they can overturn a political decision?

Absolutely not.

Yes, the panel must have the right skills. Yes, they have to act within the policies. Yes, they have to be ‘fit for purpose’. But since they are operating within policies which have been agreed by the Assembly, they are part of the democratic process, not acting against it.

Non-politicians are used to avoid and counter-balance the inevitable risk of politicians who may be pulled in different directions or be swayed by their own opinions or hobbyhorses rather than being policy led – which, experience shows, is not an impossibility.