Guernsey Press

Planners wield too much power

HANDS up all of you that thought by designating land as ‘Agricultural Priority Areas’, within our wonderful new Island Development Plan, that this would ensure protection of our fields from development or ‘other’ uses? Wrong!

Published

Planners, according to answers given to questions from Deputy Richard Graham, have happily been allowing chunks of APAs to become domestic curtilage.

Our deputies, on approving the new IDP, were duped it seems.

‘IDP needs to change, say northern deputies.’ Well get on and do something then before our island is ruined!

The Cobo house. Deputy Dawn Tindall tells us that changes were made to the original application following a public consultation. Oh really? Goodness knows what it would have looked like without those changes.

As it is we are now left with a blot on the landscape of our beautiful Cobo Bay. A domestic dwelling of a scale and massing that is totally incongruous with the surrounding area. The roof now blocks important public views as seen from the road going down towards the filter.

Without political input this is what happens. The elected deputies of the Development & Planning Authority have been effectively ‘castrated’ by the planners and have now completely abrogated their responsibilities with regard to their duties towards determining all applications for development. Or do they no longer have a mandate?

The system of delegation was introduced, with very strict guidelines, in order to speed up the processing of applications. We agreed that the planners would determine all the minor applications, but anything above a certain threshold was the responsibility of the elected deputies to deal with.

Now it seems the planners have taken control. Our island is being designed by civil servants. Professional planners they might be, but, like the rest of us, they are only human and as such they can make mistakes. And when they do, the rest of us are left to live with the result forever. Some of the decisions coming through the system lately suggest to me that the department may have employed a ‘rogue’ planner again.

Deputy John Gollop was right to resign. The whole sorry situation needs to be sorted out quickly before more damage is done and the arrogance of the DPA, in saying they will not review the IDP until they are ready and not just because genuine concerns are being expressed, is beyond belief!

The amount of development frameworks for housing coming through is totally out of control. Huge areas for housing in the north will give us a mini Milton Keynes effect. I had thought the idea was to slowly release land for housing during the life of the plan, to meet our needs, not release everything at once without considering the impact on existing development.

And do not blame the politicians for the mess that we are in. The new IDP is extremely complex, difficult and time consuming to read. I doubt that the average person had time to read and absorb this massive document. The cracks are beginning to show in the policies so now is the time to withdraw it and come up with something easily understood by all.

Ask yourself who it was that actually wrote this Island Development Plan? Not the politicians. I rest my case.

JANINE LE SAUVAGE

Meadow View,

Les Hubits de Bas,

St Martin’s,

Guernsey, GY1 4NB.