Let’s look at the edge of town, say architects
Wednesday 3rd March 2010, 2:57PM GMT.
Architects Association president Mike Waddington
THE draft Island Plan is dogmatic and contradictory, according to the president of the Association of Jersey Architects.
Mike Waddington, of Naish Waddington, says that the draft Island Plan proposes too much building in town when it should be looking at providing homes in the countryside.
The Island Plan white paper, which will form Planning policy in the Island for the next ten years, is currently out for consultation, and Mr Waddington has written to Planning director Peter Thorne to express his concerns.
He wrote: ‘While the draft Island Plan very responsibly aims to concentrate on St Helier rather than indiscriminately rezoning endless green fields, I believe that in its current form it is too dogmatic. It needs to look harder at the edge-of-town sites, brownfield sites [land that has been built on before] and glasshouse sites, and test whether they can be suitably developed into family homes as well. We need a slightly more balanced approach.’
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The draft island plan is being used, very cleverly, as a new era class driven tool to segregate the island’s community. The incredibly strong focus on using St Helier (and parts of St Saviour & St Clement) to provide future housing will create a tiered society that is split geographically according to affluence. The draft plan allows virtually no scope for new housing in the countryside that isn’t sheltered housing, or a 1st time buyer estate. There is no opportunity for anything between these two.
Jersey will become a microcosm example of what has happened in Devon and Cornwall, where parish families will be unable to ensure continued residence through the generations, unless they are suitably wealthy to afford the existing housing stock. This same housing stock will rise in value disproportionatley to other housing as it will become more desirable and less available. As the years pass by the problem will feed on itself and become even more acute.
The movement of modern architecture, that has been around for over a century now, has always suffered a great failing…..Architects want to tell people how to live, but don’t listen to how they want to live. It seems our planning department are wanting to adopt this same policy, despite the decades that have taught us how fallible this approach is. It doesn’t matter what improvements are made to town, the majority of islanders don’t want to live there.
There is a sickness in the approach where we seek to create a pretty environment, rather than a happy one. It is superficial, insensitive and socially divisive and it will leave us with the legacy of an eroded community, more so than what we already have.
My apologies for carrying on a bit, but we really need to get over our love-affair with protecting every scrap of fallow countryside, at the expense of providing suitable housing. I suppose the problem is that the understanding of what constitutes suitable housing varies greatly from one person to the next.
This draft island plan smacks of the have’s dictacting to the have-not’s (or not as much), and is class NIMBY-ism by stealth, using official State’s policy for it’s implementation.
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By “a slightly more balanced approach” Mr Waddington means continual and continuous urban creep.
The fact is that the president of the Association of Jersey Architects – a group not known for any zeal or devotion to “a slightly more balanced approach” in maintaining at least some sort of Green Belt – “has gone on record to express his concerns” that the insular planning authorities will not countenance indiscriminate building on the outskirts of St Helier.
This will destroy for ever any sort of patrimony or bequest for our heirs and successors. It was also offer quick profits for architects (not necessarily from Mr Waddington’s association) and avaricious local landowners.
We must remember that once rural land is built upon it disappears from the countryside forever.
Perhaps Senator Cohen’s Planning Department has got it right for once?
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I went to the West Country last year. House prices are high in many seaside towns. This is because so many are second homes/holiday homes to rent out.
Because of our much maligned qualifications system wealthy people are not allowed to buy properties and use them for this purpose.
If ‘quallies’ were done away with this would happen here so all the moaners would still not be able to buy a property.
The majority of people in Jersey do not want the island built over any more – there are hundreds of properties for sale currently, many in the countryside – go an have a look in the estate agents
If you don’t like the Draft Island Plan have a look at it an comment on the website
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Mike Waddington is absolutely right and the area of the island with most land is in the west.
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