Public hearing: Local Planning Brief for Harbour Action Areas

Members of the public will be able to attend a public hearing on the draft Local Planning Brief for the St Peter Port and St Sampson Harbour Action Areas at 10am on Tuesday 10th December at Les Cotils.

The draft Local Planning Brief identifies opportunities for change and enhancement of the Harbour Action Areas and will facilitate and encourage development to come forward along the east coast. It intentionally does not prescribe specific developments on specific sites, but adds detail to the Island Development Plan, ensuring that the right type of change and development comes forward and that the relevant associated issues are considered.

This is the latest stage of an independent planning inquiry which must take place before a Local Planning Brief can be brought before the States. This public hearing comes after two opportunities for islanders to provide representations (comments), the second of which closed on Monday 2nd December. Anyone is welcome to attend the hearing, but only those who have made representations will be able to speak, with eight individuals or parties having already indicated a desire to do so.

Once the independent planning inspector has considered the discussions from the hearing, he will then produce a report making recommendations to the Development & Planning Authority (DPA) and it will be for the DPA to decide whether or not to include those recommendations in their policy letter to the States. It is for the States to decide whether or not the Local Planning Brief will be accepted as a formal amendment to the Island Development Plan.

More information about the Local Planning Brief for the Harbour Action Areas is available here.

Deputy Victoria Oliver, President of the DPA, said: “This Local Planning Brief is a crucial piece of work to make sure that we can bring forward development on our east coast and so I want to say thank you to those who’ve engaged with the independent inquiry process so far to help us achieve this. Although this doesn’t prescribe what specific developments will come forward and what they might look like, this provides the necessary foundations for the right type of investment in our harbours for the next 10 years.”