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Work on homes at a former agricultural site in St. Lawrence has been brought to an abrupt halt, after Planning Officers said a number of planning restrictions were being broken.
Chief Planning Officer Peter Le Gresley issued the 'stop notice' in relation to Le Passage to Mr Joseph Bourke and Monarch Properties Limited on Friday 14 October.
Monarch Properties secured planning permission to demolish agricultural buildings on the site, and construct 16 dwellings in their place back in 2010. Retrospective revised plans were put forward earlier this year, but the outcome of the application - deemed 'Major' by the Planning Department - is yet to be decided.
The 'stop notice' said that a breach of development controls appears to have "occurred within the last eight years and that an activity or activities are being carried on that constitute or form part of that breach", and asked that such activities are "immediately ceased".
Providing detail of the breaches, the notice said that one of the buildings within the Le Passage Development Site "had not been developed in accordance with the approved plans", which only allowed a two-storey building with room(s) within the roof space.
However, the notice suggests that a three-story building "would be contrary to the requirements of policy GD6 (Design Quality) of the Bridging Island Plan" if it were to continue to be built, as it is "visually discordant" and "out of keeping with prevailing building design and scale on this site and the wider locality".
Pictured: The area in question. (Google Maps)
The same building has also been built with a two-storey side extension to the west elevation, when only a single storey extension was permitted by the original planning permission. The original planning permission also approved a brick paving finish, but this has been breached by the use of a tarmac road surface throughout the site.
The Le Passage Development Site has been partly developed and occupied without the installation of a ‘work of art’, which was required as part of the original planning permission. The stop notice explains that the absence of this artwork means that "the development fails to have adequate overall quality for this location, harmful to the character and appearance of the locality".
The site has also been developed with the required 'Site Layout Plan' and 'Scheme for Disposal of Foul and Surface Water' which are required to detail roads, footpaths and a surface water drainage scheme. Without these, the site could be developed in a way which is "potentially harmful to the environment generally, including water infrastructure".
The Le Passage Development Site has also been partly developed without the submission and approval of a ‘Landscaping Scheme’ which has failed to be implemented within the first available planting season as promised in the original planning permission. The site has also failed to display the ‘Visibility Splays’ at the northern exit from the site and is therefore "potentially hazardous to highway safety".
The notice said that all work on the site should stop immediately.
If stop notices are not complied with, site owners may be liable to prosecution under Article 46 of the Planning and Building (Jersey) Law 2002.
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