From John Mesch, chairman, Council for the Protection of Jersey’s Heritage.

THE latest application for a large development on the headland at Plémont has just been published. The plan is to build 28 expensive houses, most of them not on the site of the derelict holiday camp which is to be demolished, but on previously undeveloped land. The whole site is inside the Green Zone, where there is a general presumption under the planning law ‘against all forms of new development for whatever purpose’.

In debating proposition P.112/2006 the States of Jersey agreed that the headland at Plémont should be preserved as an open space for the enjoyment of the public of the Island. All the arguments put forward supporting that successful proposition still hold good.

The Minister for Planning and Environment has previously denied similar applications for large-scale development on this site. His justification for doing so also remains valid.

Building 28 houses spread over an area displaced from, but apparently larger than, the present derelict holiday camp, all intended for private sale, some of them at prices in excess of £1 million, will result in the fragmented privatisation of this coastal headland. Rightfully this important part of the coastal landscape should be included in the proposed Coastal National Park and given the highest possible level of protection.

The misleading claim by the developer that the remaining land, larger in area than Howard Davis Park, will be open to the public and kept as ‘nature conservation land’ and ‘managed grassland’ is ludicrous in the extreme. Who on earth will wish to spend their Sunday afternoon strolling through a suburbanised, upmarket housing estate with a new access road, garden walls and 100 non-native species trees growing in what should clearly remain a typical Jersey coastal, scenic, heathland and historic landscape? Once privatised among many individual owners in the way that is planned, it will be lost to the public forever.

If past experience is anything to go by, the doctrine of ‘legitimate expectation’ by the owner will be given as a justification for recommending approval. This in spite of the fact that the former Solicitor-General advised the Royal Court [2007 JLR 167] ‘that the doctrine of legitimate expectation should not be regarded as applicable to planning matters other than in exceptional circumstances.’

The Council firmly holds the opinion that the public at large have a higher level of legitimate expectation, that the minister should apply the planning law in the way that is clearly intended and that the agreed decision by the States, made in the public interest, should prevail.

Jersey’s cultural heritage in the form of the beautiful and historic landscape at Plémont should not be destroyed by transforming it into suburbia. It must be preserved for the enjoyment of future generations.

Without doubt, it is the legal and the moral responsibility of the States to do just that.