Planning officers should take a more pro-active role

Take the Chalet Hotel, close to where I live, the building was always a bit of an eyesore but tucked away down a lane. It will never be used as a hotel again, it is plainly not viable, yet the planners are frustrating alternative use because it once was a hotel. Moreover they are insisting that they reconfirm the lack of interest in the property as a hotel by having to advertise the property in the island and the UK for sale as a hotel for a second time before considering an updated proposal. What could be more moronic than that?

What is more important is that a replacement building fits into the local environment, whether it is used as apartments, holiday lets or even houses is irrelevant. Pretending that as a hotel it has more economic benefit to the island is flawed and I don’t see the case.

Similarly each site, be it a glasshouse or any other redundant building, should be judged against how appropriate a new building fits in to the environment. Is there anything wrong in building an elegant house on land that has a collapsed glasshouse on it? What advantage is it to the island and the environment to leave a derelict eyesore?

No, I don’t want to see swathes of tacky little developments either from the States or private builders but treating all defunct hotels and all derelict glasshouses the same is a nonsense. If alternatives are attractive and of economic benefit to the island, then let it be encouraged.

One way forward would be to change the role of planning to be proactive in assisting to develop schemes for replacement buildings. The confrontational system where you have to put in an application and they then consider it is childish and wastes a lot of time, money and effort to the extent that many people just walk away from projects and the island stays littered with derelict buildings.

When we built our house on the island over 20 years ago we had a site where it was agreed that the original property needed replacing but it took over a year to obtain planning consent for a very traditional design because the planning officer (not an islander) disliked our proposal because it was very traditional but was not prepared to explain what she thought would be acceptable.

I know that changing their role to assist development would be an anathema to many in the States but come on guys, get off our backs. It has has been said in Jersey by the politicians recently themselves there is too much government and the same applies here.

G. M. OLDROYD,

St Martin’s.