ST HELIER residents sent sheltered housing plans back to the drawing board at a meeting last night.

About 40 parishioners packed into the former Magistrate’s Court in Seale Street – which was being used as a parish meeting room for the first time – to vote against proposals for a ‘care village’ at Oaklands in Route de la Trinité and to ask for more information about plans for sheltered homes behind the Channel Television site at La Pouquelaye. Residents of the Oaklands area said that the proposal to rezone two agricultural fields to allow part of the ‘care village’ development were a step too far and were inappropriate in a parish that had already lost most of its rural land. And despite a plea from Oaklands owner Alan Miller, who said that the scheme would pay for the full restoration of the house, they voted to reject the plans. He had tabled a proposal to build a development of 26 assisted-living apartments, 34 open-market retirement homes, 28 rental retirement homes and a 60-bed care home on the site.