From Clifford Wilson.
I REFER to the lead article featured on page 2 of the JEP (10 June) dealing with Senator Cohen’s concern relating to the deal that he perceives he had made regarding field 530A with the development company Dandara.

It is, in my view, quite simply obscenely greedy and unreasonable of Dandara, who having just received permission to build 65 homes on the former Jersey Dairy site then expect the Island population to metaphorically ‘roll over on its back’ and to condone an application to the Planning Minister to release field 530A for development and further profit for that company.

Senator Cohen has stridently sought to improve architectural standards in Jersey over the course of his ministership and for this he is rightly to be commended.

He has pursued his responsibilities conscientiously and largely well. But how he now finds himself in such ‘an extraordinarily difficult position’ with Dandara in regard to the issue which I am addressing, I find hard to understand or to have sympathy with.

It occurs to me, in consideration of all the appertaining circumstances, that perhaps Senator Cohen was a little misguided in having given Dandara an indication that they might be allowed to build a small number of houses on field 530A. The field was, after all, classified under the ‘countryside’ zone and development is development, regardless of the actual number of dwellings proposed.

Dandara Ltd had, after all, not purchased the land with any form of promise, intimation or pre-understanding that the ‘countryside’ classification could be set aside and the land built upon. There is, therefore, no obligation whatsoever to hand them a financially valuable ‘softener’.

I would submit, and I believe that I may well speak for a great many islanders, that it is well past time that there should be no more tenuous ‘deals’ struck between the States of Jersey – who should represent the interests of the Island population at large – and the development company Dandara.

It is not so long ago that there was a similar situation, when the Planning department felt under some form of obligation to Dandara to grant the construction of a finite number of dwellings at the l’Hermitage Gardens site at Beaumont.

Apparently, had the Planning department not felt under such an obligation, then a smaller number of units would have been granted for that site.

To conclude, and in fairness to Senator Cohen, it cannot be said in regard to field 530A that the indication he gave to Dandara was in any way irretrievable or ‘cast in stone’, as he and his department are, in common with all States sectors and indeed of us all, subject to that overall umbrella of democratic governance that we have all collectively subscribed to.