Masterplan needed to prevent “Costa de St Brelade”

Monday 26 September 2016

A group created to help draw up a masterplan for one of Jersey's most beautiful bays has disbanded alleging the Environment department has "misled the public."

In a strongly worded letter to the Environment Minister, the former chairman of the St Brelade’s Working Party, Moz Scott, says money it was promised has been diverted elsewhere and its suggestions ignored. She claims the department has “...used funds partly earmarked for the plan on other projects,” and that civil servants “...have derailed the proposed plan.”

Newly elected Senator, Sarah Ferguson, who lives in the area, plans to highlight the situation in this week’s States sitting, and to once again get official backing and money for the project.

Senator Ferguson said: “I am hopeful that the debate will give members of the States Assembly an opportunity to reaffirm their intentions to protect a well-loved and high profile Island tourist asset and will also give the minister an opportunity to explain why his ministry has sought to reverse a decision of the States Assembly in what some members of the public might consider to be an underhand way, while finding funds for projects that, unlike the local development plan for the bay, experts haven’t described as urgent.”

In July 2014 an independent planning report recommended a local development masterplan should be drawn up for St Brelade’s Bay “as a matter of urgency.” The suggestion was prompted by concerns that development was happening piecemeal, and was having a detrimental affect on one of the Island’s top tourist destinations and leading to a “Costa de St Brelade.”

In her report Senator Ferguson is asking States members to give the Department of the Environment an extra £100,000 to fund the drawing up of a Long-Term Development Plan for the bay. She says the department’s apparent indifference is “fuelling community fears that inadequate support is being provided to protect the bay’s natural assets and the Island’s tourist industry.”

She added: “A plan would give the bay’s tourist businesses the opportunity to promote measures and planning strategies designed to assist the growth of businesses that are largely reliant on the preservation of the bay’s natural settings.”