TAKE any local newspaper, and you can bet the price of a pint to sup in a welcoming hostelry while having a good read that a fair proportion of stories would cover planning applications.

Which is how it should be in any community that takes an interest in defending its character and protecting the environment and heritage.

Jersey is no different. Moreover, when an application is submitted to build in a sensitive or much-loved location in one parish, then the good burghers of every other parish feel justified in expressing their views. Unfortunately, any robust debate tends to come after plans have been approved – by which time it is too late to do anything except lament the desecration of yet another precious chunk of our rock.

As the planning process can be a long and arduous one, it is imperative never to take your eye off the ball. It is a game of many players in multiple manoeuvres as developers and architects try to outflank planners and objectors.

The redevelopment of the old holiday camp at Portelet is a prime example from which to learn that even when the final whistle has been blown, the rules allow for a period of extra time during which revisions may be submitted. As so often happens, those who thought the game was over find that they have been bowled out by a googlie.

The problem is that the planning process isn’t a game, as there is far more at stake that scoring points. Just because plans have been approved, it does not mean that the applicant cannot make drastic changes, as happened with Portelet.

Any development, no matter how big or small, has the potential to alter the landscape in which it sits – and not always for the better. Again, the Portelet development is a stark example, with the private house above La Coupe and La Saie Harbour coming in a close second.

Because of a more ‘relaxed’ consideration of applications of late in the countryside and on the coastal fringes, houses are being built that sit incongruently with the surrounding area.

Whatever happened, I increasingly ask myself, to the principles of only allowing new buildings, on a previously developed site in the countryside and green zones, to be no more than ten per cent bigger that the original footprint, and also considering the impact of the development on the immediate area?

I need look no further than my own environs to realise that neither of these once crucial planning considerations plays any significant part in the current application process.

The consequences are plain to see. Country mansions and faux grand designs are popping up in the most inappropriate locations – usually with state-of-the-art security systems totally out of proportion to the safe society in which we are blessed to live – and illuminated at night like some national monument.

Yet the saddest consequence of this urbanisation of the countryside is when developments swallow up a valley, meadow or field to be landscaped out of natural existence and replaced with manicured lawns and an instant garden delivered on the back of a van.

Where is the sense in paying a fortune for a perfectly good house, only to knock it down and replace it with some overbearing structure comprising glass, steel and cedar then market it at an over-inflated price as an example of ‘iconic’ architecture?
The answer, of course, is staring yours truly in the face: money.

People versus pounds in the planning process is dominating the national news at the moment as conservationists, led by the National Trust, battle against the coalition government’s proposed reforms to the national planning process. These proposals seek to simplify policies introduced in the 1930s to protect the countryside, heritage sites and important open spaces around towns and villages by controlling urban sprawl in the green belt.

At the crux of the opposition to the reforms is the fear that, in seeking to meet the growing demand for affordable housing and new business opportunities to boost the economy, the government risks undermining the key policy that the planning system is there to protect what is most special in the landscape.

As the director-general of the National Trust, Dame Fiona Reynolds, recently said: ‘Planning is for people, not profit.’

These are words that should equally apply in Jersey yet just seem to fall on the deaf ears of those who increasingly put financial considerations above the well-being of the community.

My growing sadness at the transformation of our countryside was compounded this week by an application submitted to demolish and rebuild a house on the fringes of the Boulivot heights that is as familiar to me as an old friend.

My malaise was compounded by a response from those behind the proposed development of one of Jersey’s most charming residential communities, the caravan site at Ollivier Farm at Ouaisné. Commenting on the 500-plus objections, the owner’s agent, Simon Buckley, said that some of the objections had been ‘made from the heart’ and did not involve planning matters.

That just about sums up what’s wrong with our planning system and the way Jersey is governed.

If any government department should listen to the heartfelt objections of the people, then it is Planning.

Sometimes it is right and prudent to step outside the stifling bounds of policy, regulations, guidelines and law to consider the wider picture and understand the real implications of rubber-stamping a set of house plans.