LAST-minute legal advice from the Solicitor General scuppered moves in the States yesterday to protect green-field sites from developers.

Former Planning chairman Deputy Jackie Hilton delivered a rousing speech attacking the Environment and Public Services Committee for failing to stick to the letter of the Island Plan before committee member Deputy Guy de Faye dropped a bombshell.

Raising a point of order, he asked for clarification of the validity of Deputy Hilton’s projet to rezone sites in St Brelade and St Peter, and Deputy Gerard Baudains’s similar request for sites in St Clement.

The Solicitor General, Stephanie Nicolle, advised that only rezoning propositions lodged by the Planning Committee, or amendments to those propositions, were legal.

Even if the States approved the Deputies’ projets, she added, Environment would not be bound to act.

This came as a shock to Deputy Hilton, and most Members, including previous Environment president Deputy Maurice Dubras.