Les Blanches should not be concreted over
ARE those making decisions that affect everybody on this island really up for the job? Yes, I am talking about the upcoming open planning debate about the fields known as Les Blanches. This is something close to my heart as I was brought up in St Martin's. I can remember playing in these fields as a child. I believe that the fields were brought in the '50s by the building firm Littlewoods at the same time as the La Bouvee estate was being built along Jerbourg Road. At that time, plans were submitted to build a private housing estate on this land. Permission was denied by the then-called IDC, who had the foresight to recognise the land was top-quality farmland that should not be concreted over.
I really do believe that even now this land should not be built on. When whoever owns it now bought the land they knew it was top-quality farmland, so why should they be allowed to have permission to build on it?
It is not just the land that needs protecting.
Whatever they propose to do will bring added danger to the surrounding areas, to the children who walk up and down to school twice daily and the many other people that live in the area and walk to and from the shops.
It makes me wonder whether the new 10-year island plan is worth the paper it is written on, especially if this development is allowed to go ahead.
It is highly ironic that less than a year ago the Planning Department were threatening to take someone to court who had developed a bit of wasteland as a memorial to her late husband. She was told she did not have permission to do it and that it was agricultural land and should be used for that purpose only. Yet this bit of land, no bigger than a quarter of a vergee, would by today's standards not even be big enough to keep an animal on and would definitely be no good for growing crops on due to the nature and size of the field. On average, you need a vergee and a half per cow to be sustainable.
The block of land at Les Blanches is of great value to farmers and for the sustainability of farming in the island.
There are many more suitable sites for building than to take a field out of production and turn it into concrete.
We hear so much about disused greenhouse sites and that they should not be developed because they are on agricultural land. But we really do have to look at how long these derelict greenhouse sites have been there and how much the soil around these sites has been contaminated over years from chemical use, lead from the painting of wooden greenhouses and the clinker left around the greenhouses from the old coal boilers.
If we keep losing areas of farmland like this at Les Blanches, how much longer will it be before farming is unsustainable and goes the same way as so many other local industries like the tomato/flower industry, tourism and now even our fishing industry – all due to bad governments and decisions made by departments.
CHRIS MOURANT,
20, Le Hurel,
St Martin's.
