Foreshore map pushed back...again

Monday 29 June 2020

A report promising to once and for all mark out where a contested strip of coastal land begins and ends has been delayed again, until September of this year.

The Landside Boundary Review is supposed to determine where the ‘foreshore’ begins and ends, even though the government has so far already fined a group homeowners for encroaching into the area.

It was proposed following the damning findings of the States Complaints Board (SCB) over how two coastal homeowners were fined more than £50,000 when they sold their properties. 

Long-contested and vaguely defined as the area of land “lying between the low water mark and the high water mark of the full spring tide,” disputes over the foreshore have prompted the government to carry out a review to assess where exactly the boundary between public and private land lies. 

Pictured: The review has now been pushed back until September.

The problems arose when the Queen – who originally owned the foreshore and seabed – gifted the land back to ‘the public’ in 2015. Following this, Jersey Property Holdings (JPH) have pursued financial recompense from owners of seaside property, even if the building was on the foreshore before the land was gifted back to the people of Jersey.

Since then, the government has commissioned a review aiming to clearly delineate where this long-contested strip of land begins and ends. Initially, the review was hoped to be completed by the end of last year before the Infrastructure Minister committed in a Scrutiny hearing that the report would be published in January of this year.

A Freedom of Information (FoI) request then showed that the report was pushed back another four months until at least April 2020, with the allotted budget already around 70% spent on lawyers’ fees.

Pictured: The Minister for Infrastructure said the report would be ready in January. 

The Government said then that the delay was due to the availability of the department’s lawyer and the realisation that the project is actually more complicated than first anticipated. 

Meanwhile, as at September last year, JPH were still pursuing cases of ‘encroachment’ for compensation.

Now, as the island is easing out of the corona virus-induced lockdown, it appears the April deadline has been moved back further still with the latest estimate now standing in September 2020. 

When asked by Express about progress on the review, a Government spokesperson said: “The costing is yet to be finalised and the review is due to completed by September.”