Building on fields will not be negative for biodiversity, planning president confidently claims

Saturday 27 July 2024

Controversial moves to build hundreds of houses on green field sites will not negatively affect biodiversity, the politician in charge of planning across Guernsey has said.

The opening round of consultation on changes to the Island Development Plan, which will dictate what can be built and where for the next five years, ends on Monday.

Serious questions are being asked about the calculations being made to justify the need to build on greenfield sites and the rejection of other options.

Questioned about whether biodiversity will be negatively affected if green field sites were built on, Development & Planning Authority President Deputy Victoria Oliver was unequivocal in her response.

"I can say no to that because we've got the Strategy of Nature that was adopted two years ago and basically any development that comes forward now it has to have a net biodiversity gain, so even though you're seeing buildings go up there still can be great biodiversity within those housing sites," she said in an online Q&A session.

Pictured: Deputy Victoria Oliver.

"You only have to look at buffers, the edge of the housing sites to protect noise coming from the road and vice versa, and those areas are so important to a housing site. I think if anything is designed correctly it should be a real enhancement to the island. If anything is negative, it won't get through the planning process so biodiversity should not be a problem within the housing sites."

The Authority has gone further than independent experts believe is necessary in deciding how many homes should be targeted in the period covered by the plans.

It has inflated the number of private homes it wants by 15% and affordable homes by 25% above States-backed calculations, meaning it was then decided it needed to propose zoning fields for development that would otherwise have been left untouched.

DPA believes it needs to create space for 971 private homes and 901 social homes in the next five years, also well above the current rate of what has actually been built in the preceding period.

There is already enough development land in the current IDP for 2,000 homes without the changes it has proposed,.

But it has rejected any notion of rezoning areas that have already been allocated for private housing that have not yet been developed, another move that would meet its stretch affordable housing target without needing to rezone fields.

DPA member Sasha Kazantseva-Miller stressed it was not in their remit to penalise or incentivise to encourage development.

"We considered it would not be appropriate to reallocate existing housing sites for affordable housing instead because it would be extremely controversial and lead to probably no development from developers as well. It's been a very tight balancing act."

More details of the IDP review and how to comment can be found HERE.

Pictured top: A field on the edge of the L'Aumone centre that DPA wants to earmark for 35 houses.