Deputy’s DPA resignation saddened me

One of our better deputies, he is a man of great integrity, honesty and has high standards of fair play.

For him to see ‘open planning meetings’ become a complete farce, whereby the final decision is made away from public scrutiny and behind closed doors, must have been the last straw that made him resign.

It appears that the other political members on the DPA have failed to resist such an undemocratic change to the very ethos of open planning meetings and as such it is they, including Deputy Gollop, that should resign.

Many, many people lost faith in our planning system when the policies of the Rural Area Plan were warped and twisted and even dismissed to allow a housing development on a prime piece of agricultural land in St Martin’s.

Since then, the planners seem hell-bent on producing development briefs on as many green bits as they can find.

The elected board of the DPA should have knocked this on the head straight away.

What is desperately needed (before the planners try to shout me down with ‘its policy’) is a review of the Strategic Land Use Plan.

A document now well past its sell-by date, produced by politicians long gone from the States and civil servants probably now moved on to other things.

I believe the stupid situation we now find of agricultural land being taken for domestic gardens stemmed from a sentence in this document.

It must stop.

Every week we read applications for change of use from agriculture to domestic garden from all over the island.

At this rate we shall lose large areas of valuable agricultural land which we will most certainly need for food production in the future.

Will our current politicians take note of this and act swiftly?

I doubt it.

JANINE LE SAUVAGE,

Meadow View,

Les Hubits de Bas,

St Martin’s,

GY4 6NB.