Comment: Planning and Environment = chalk and cheese?

Thursday 19 April 2018

With green fields, mooing cows and extensive coastline all within a short drive of each other, there’s no doubt that Jersey is unique – but how far should we go to protect that?

With a sharply rising population and a rocketing demand for affordable housing, is it time to accept that some green zones will inevitably have to make way for new, non-agricultural residents?

Such questions are those continually faced by the Planning and Environment Department – a match not made in heaven, according to Express columnist and long-term environment campaigner Mike Stentiford, but more akin to chalk and cheese…

While the world struggles to come to terms with simple common sense, the same will soon be demanded locally of the imminent new intake of those with the best of politically motivated intentions. As future challenges go, rarely has wisdom, foresight and courage been at the sharp end of such political necessity.

Pictured: The proposed location of affordable homes in St. Peter, which were recently rejected.

So often the words ‘balanced approach’ come to the fore in the majority of States discussions. This is particularly relevant when addressing sensitive subjects such as health, education, housing and social issues.

The one important ‘balanced partner’ with a strong connection to each of these issues is ‘environment’ although, in spite of its massive contribution towards everyone’s overall wellbeing, rarely is it on the receiving end of any major debate. When it does merit open discussion, it’s invariably in tandem with its close and, some say, uneasy partner, Planning.

Three major developments have recently shone a bright green light on this difficult P&E partnership where one well-meaning decision compromises the likewise meaningful remit of the other. The Planning Minister’s perfectly legitimate rejection of a first-time buyers’ housing development in St. Peter is a classic example, and one that crystallises the increasing pressures on good agricultural land.

While the sizeable green space proposed for development evidently fails to squarely hit the required ‘biodiversity button’, its Green Zone status remains steadfastly glued to the current Island Plan. It’s easy to understand the whys and wherefores behind such an officially bonafide document but to simply ignore the ethics behind it’s worthy intentions would be to trivialise the reason for its existence.

Pictured: Mike Stentiford says the encroachment on the open green-field wetland site for the agreed Beaumont development is likely to hand a ‘red card’ to wintering Brent geese.

Ironically, it’s also worth remembering that, until quite recently, the area of open grassland proposed for development was the venue for the hugely popular West Show. This was an event that the general public attended in droves in order to understand how farming and the environment were inseparable in making the countryside the jewel that it fortunately still is.

The second major application for much-needed residential housing requires the demolition of the Co-op’s previously owned warehouse at Beaumont. While no one would argue against a critically needed rebuild at this particular semi-urban site at St. Peter, the environmental impact on the immediately adjoining wet meadow appears to have become irrelevant - and this despite this open field being classed as Green Zone, periodically morphing into marshland and, for centuries past, proving a safe haven for wintering Brent geese.

While accepting the undoubted validity for development, it nevertheless shows that however long an association has been nurtured between an open space and wildlife, the understandable residential demands on the former invariably negates any consideration for the latter.

It’s a slightly different situation with the third acceptance for development: the new rebuild in the centre of St Brelade’s Bay. Due to the current level of development and an absence of other necessary criteria, the bay is not included in the Jersey ‘Coastal’ National Park. Perhaps if more public and political support and recognition was given to the protective values of a National Park (officially endorsed by the States of Jersey in 2011) then the bay in its entirety would certainly have been deserving of inclusion. If this had been the case, then the outcome for this particular coastal build might have been somewhat different.

Pictured: An over-developed St Brelade’s Bay has been instrumental to its non-inclusion in the Jersey National Park, according to Mike Stentiford. (SBBA)

Balancing the Island’s finite landscape against a growing population and the obvious consequences of land acquisition for residential requirements is just one of a very long list of serious challenges on P&E’s political agenda.

Perhaps, if the department were ever in need of an appropriate ‘strapline’, then a profound quotation by Henry D Thoreau might be worthy of consideration. “What good is a house if you haven’t got a decent planet to put it on?”