What is it about planners that they have such an unerring ability to make us ordinary citizens so justifiably angry? It’s almost as if they make it their life’s work.
The new two-storey house being built at Torteval (Press, August 22) stands out like a sore thumb in a landscape of great beauty as anyone who drives along Rue de la Porte can testify. It is so obviously out of sympathy with its surroundings. And we have an informant telling the Guernsey Press that the plans were nodded through without them seeing an outline ‘of the full roof of the property’. This in a particularly sensitive area. Not surprisingly locals are upset, and so they should be, not to mention the rest of us who enjoy the vista.
The whole episode is redolent of summer 2023 when the same group of public ‘servants’ allowed the 90ft pylons round the driving range at Grande Mare golf without their political masters grasping how impactful they would be (and now are) on another part of this remarkable Guernsey landscape.
And failure to understand the impact of their decisions is not the only trademark of the planners here. The letter from jonesmnr about another planning decision (Guernsey Press, 13 August) about them hit that nail totally on the head. It was a feeling many aficionados of the legion of UK house reno TV programmes in recent years will have shared when well-meaning renovators of historic buildings get ridiculously expensive and sometimes impossible to achieve conditions placed on the planning permission awarded.
They present the classic image of insensitive bureaucrats and, as jonesmnr wrote, seem happier to see places rot than allow someone to try to revive them in an affordable way. And for those who believe that was an isolated example and does not really happen in Guernsey just think back to June this year when someone on the island was prosecuted for removing rotting window frames in an old house despite the fact they looked identical to the originals, according to the court anyway. I seem to recall his offence was he had not asked the permission of these planner public ‘servants’ (box-ticking autocrats) first.
Contrast that guy’s experience with that of Elizabeth College, reported in the Press. They painted a tower at the school without getting planning permission first and were told so by the planners. Were they prosecuted? No, they were invited to apply for retrospective approval which, we learned in the next day’s issue, they got. So these people cannot even claim consistency in their decisions.
Putting blots on landscapes. No problem, it seems. Failing to apply for planning? Depends on who you are. Such are the optics, anyway.
Stuart Garner
St Martin’s
A spokesman for the Planning Service responds:
Thank you for the opportunity to respond to your reader’s letter.
All planning decisions are made in accordance with the Planning Law and policies which were the result of extensive public consultation. Decisions involve balancing a range of sometimes conflicting economic, social and environmental issues. We appreciate that our decisions will not always please everyone.
At first glance, without knowing all the factors and circumstances, some individual decisions might appear inconsistent, but we are always guided by the relevant legal and policy constraints, which require us to consider factors such as the visual and other relevant impacts of development, the reasonable aspirations of applicants to develop their property and the statutory duty to preserve our heritage of Protected Buildings and Monuments.
Where unauthorised development is undertaken, in all but the most egregious circumstances owners have the option of applying for retrospective permission. Court proceedings are always a last resort where other approaches have been unsuccessful and are never undertaken lightly. Submitted proposals are dealt with objectively and fairly and the identity of an applicant has no bearing on the outcome of an application. Where permission is refused, applicants still have a right of appeal to the independent Planning Panel.
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