From Brian Hotton.
YOUR report (JEP, 26 September) headlined ‘New Island Plan proposes seven sites for rezoning’ makes no mention of the size of these sites – are they 50, 100 or 1,000 vergées?

In the same article it states: ‘Up to 4,000 new homes will be needed within the next ten years.’

It is not long since States Members agreed to rezone 60 vergées of good agricultural land, as well as green fields, yet only a couple of weeks ago in the JEP questions were being asked why fields that were good agricultural land and were rezoned last year had, as yet, received no planning applications for building.

Yet Senator Cohen, when speaking in the rezoning debate last year, stated: ‘I can assure Members that if I am minister and if the assistant minister has any say in it, there will be extremely robust planning obligations on the developers to ensure that the maximum public benefit and community benefit are derived from these schemes.’

I certainly hope he does enforce these obligations on the developers mentioned above, and tell us, the public, what these ‘robust obligations’ are.

Going back to the report of 26 September, it gets even worse when one reads on: ‘Ideas to build a second waterfront with 800 homes by moving the port to La Collette and moving the fuel farm offshore, and perhaps into the Ramsar protected zone, are being looked at,’ said Planning director Peter Thorne.

I am afraid those up at Planning and Environment cannot be taken seriously, can they? Not only will the fuel farm have to be moved, but so will the new incinerator.

To move the port, fuel farm and incinerator the cost must be in the region of £800m, and that is without the pound being hedged against monopoly money.

But then again, if the States can sell these homes for, say, four million each there would be enough money left over to run the Island for three years.

On 1 April 2008, in a States debate, Deputy Labey of Grouville, during a discussion regarding the rezoning of agricultural land, said,: ‘We need to stop being so insular and start seeing the bigger picture, because in the future we may very well need to be more self-sustaining, providing more of our own food, and we will need land to do that on.’

And of course not forgetting our Chief Minister ‘in waiting’, Senator Ozouf, who in the JEP of 3 October 2008 said that he felt that he was the States Member who had done the most analysis of housing demand and that he thought no more rezoning was required in the Island. Senator Ozouf should have a word with Senator Cohen.

Of the seven sites being proposed for building on, all are growing and food producing land, which should be used for such. Deputy Labey got it right.