But the plans were on display!

“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.” 

--- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

I was trying to find the Tambar Park Planning Inspector’s report, and emailed the Department. This was the reply:

“Thank you for your email.  The Inspector could not himself find his reports (there are two) on the States of Jersey website, and has written about this to the department concerned.  He eventually found them listed as “ILAP Officer Report Assessment Sheet”  under “Other Documents” for application reference P/2017/1023.  “

“Please note that the Inspector’s reports are wrongly labelled as they are not the same thing as a Planning Officer’s Report and they are not “assessment sheets”.  You may wish to take this matter up with Chris Jones, the case officer in the planning department to whom I am copying this email for information”

The mind boggles!!! Douglas Adams was closer to the truth than one thinks!

So the last report is dated 25/07/2018, and entitled “ILAP Officer report/assessment sheet Inspector Supplementary Report to Minister dated May 2018.”

It’s an interesting report, not least because it is a review after significant changes had been made. The earlier report says basically “back to the drawing board”, and while the revised one gets passed, it has caveats.

What the report concluded and the Media coverage

In summary, both these proposals would have planning benefits and disbenefits. The proposals are linked in such ways that they stand or fall together - it would not make sense, for example, to grant planning permission for the proposed dwelling on the east site, which if implemented would take away the parking for the Tamba Park tourist attraction, unless the replacement car park were to be provided on the west site. Nor would it be sensible to permit the proposed holiday village and enlarged parking and other facilities for Tamba Park on the west site whilst leaving the existing car park off La Rue des Varvots on the east site.

The decision whether or not to grant planning permissions depends on the weight put on various aspects. The cases are more evenly balanced than has been claimed for the applicant, and than might be suggested by the relative volume of evidence or submissions presented by the two main parties; but in my judgment the benefits of the proposals - including removing the redundant glasshouses, restoring a substantial part of the land to a condition suitable for agricultural use, helping the tourism-related economy, taking traffic away from La Rue des Varvots and enabling improvements to be made to local drainage – carry considerable weight. on balance, I judge that the public interest planning gains would be sufficient to overcome the objections to the proposals, including the normal presumption against most forms of urban development in the Green Zone.

It should be noted that while there is building on the green zone, with the removal of glasshouses, there is also “restoring a substantial part of the land to a condition suitable for agricultural use”, so that the merits of the case are not about taking land from the Green Zone, but also about putting land into the Green Zone.

This is something which is not apparent in the media summary, which is why I wanted to see the full report. It also comes in the recommendations further down: “the removal of existing glasshouses, the restoration of land for potential open-field agricultural use”. That must have weighted as significant, but the fact that it is only “potential” may have one factor in tipping the balance when John Young reviewed the plans. It is not an actual trade off, only a potential one.

It is also worth noting that while the Inspector comes down in favour, he also regards the matter as “evenly balanced”. This is also not a case of an Inspector saying one thing, and the Planning Minister, Deputy John Young, just ignoring what he has to say.

So while the media were right to report that the Minister turned down the report, the way in which they did so is misleading.

Here, for example is one account from ITV News:

The Inspector cited several pros and cons and considered that, on balance, "the public interest planning gains were enough to overcome the concerns, including the fact that Tamba Park is in the Green Zone, where there is a general presumption against development".  However, the Environment Minister did not agree and refused the plans.

And the JEP says even more forcefully:

The Planning Minister announced he had refused the application for 27 self-catering units on the tourism site, based in St Lawrence – despite an independent planning inspector recommending it be given the green light.

Given those reports, the average reader would be inclined to ask: what is the point of having a Planning Inspector if the Minister can ignore his counsel. That, of course, only makes sense if all you have is the media reports, especially that of the JEP.

In fact the very fact that the Inspector says the decision is “evenly balanced” means that the Planning Minister certainly had a right to review the plan and could well have come to a different decision.  An evenly or finely balanced decision is one in which the arguments for and against it were of almost equal merit, and clearly how one weighs up priorities may differ in such circumstances.

And finally, I’m passing no judgement on the merits or otherwise of the site. All I am trying to do is dig down and clarify the matters at hand in the differing decisions of Inspector and Minister.