More than 40 new housing sites rejected by inspectors

Tuesday 25 February 2014

UK planning experts have backed the Planning Minister’s plans to allow three large sites to be developed to meet the demand for local housing.

However, 41 other sites – such as disused glasshouses, private gardens and agricultural fields in open countryside - were overwhelmingly dismissed as developing them would conflict with the Island Plan.

Independent UK planning inspectors Chris Shepley and Alan Langton’s review of the Island’s planning blueprint supports Environment Minister Rob Duhamel’s decision to rezone De La Mare’s glasshouses in Rue á Don, Grouville, Samarès Nursery in St Clement and the former Longueville Garden Centre in St Saviour, to provide a mix of first-time buyer and States rental homes.

When it came to the 41 sites – which included Lion Park in St Lawrence, the Gorey allotments, Fauvic Nursery in Grouville and other disused glasshouse sites around the Island  – they supported the Minister’s decision in 37 cases not to make exceptions to the Island Plan.  However, they did suggest that two sites could be considered in the future and two were withdrawn from the review process.

The future of disused glasshouse sites, some of which have been left to decay into ‘blots’ on the rural landscape, has been under discussion since the decline of the indoor  tomato and flower industries in the 1990s in face of European competition.

In their report Mr Shepley and Mr Langton concluded: “The fact of the existence of disused glasshouses is not in itself a sufficient justification for a housing allocation; all depends on their location and suitability. The Plan provides for other ways of dealing with these sites.”