10 Years: Project Fear and the Island Plan

In what has been rightly described by the JEP editorial as "Project Fear", the big guns are out telling us that anything other than the Gloucester Site for the new hospital will not be able to deliver for ten years.

But let's look at what will happen if it goes ahead on Gloucester Street - more plans to be submitted, another Planning Inquiry, and before we know yet another year will have gone by, and the inspector will almost certainly reject the plans, because they simply won't work.

And meantime, the Scrutiny Panel has proposed that the States be the final arbiter of the hospital plans, which while it may be mentioned by the Planning Minister, is a disaster - it leads to ad hoc decision making on the hoof, with no accountability under the Island Plan, and makes you wonder why the States need plans to be submitted for consideration when they have the final say anyway. Just what is the point of a planning inquiry if accepting the conclusions can just be voted on.

Listening to the hustings on the hospital, Geraint Jennings said that all sites - Gloucester Street, Overdale, St Saviours, and Warwick Farm, would fall foul of the Island plan, and what was needed was to define parameters beforehand to allow the Planning Minister to make special exceptions for special projects.

Actually, Geraint didn't seem to spot that there is a provision which would almost certainly be applicable to Warwick Farm, insofar as a structure might impact on the green zone in the Island Plan.

As the Les Quennevais School site showed:

"The main issue is the loss of agricultural fields and open space between Red Houses and the Airport. It is recognised that this is not ideal but there are very few sites of an adequate size in the right location. The site is in the Green Zone in the Island Plan but the policy allows for ‘elements of significant public infrastructure, such as a new secondary school’ provided it can be demonstrated that this is the most appropriate site and any impact is mitigated as far as possible. "

That meant that the Planning Inspector could allow that site within his brief, despite it being Green Zone, and something similar could be developed in respect of other areas such as townscape or impact on the horizon.

But it should be noted that while it allowed plans to go ahead, the Planning Inspector still recommended the first set of plans be rejected. As the JEP reported:

"The public hearings took place in January but following recommendations by the inspector Graham Self, Deputy Luce rejected the application in February over concerns about the building’s design and vehicle access."

That is why it is extremely important that the States do not remove the ability of the Planning Minister to accept or reject an application. They can widen the parameters so that as far as the "big picture" is concerned "elements of significant public infrastructure" can override the basic principles of the Island plan, but the first Les Quennevais plans showed that this is not enough - the detailed plans must also not have serious flaws, or if it does, they must be remedied.

It is well to remember that as the planning inspector noted, the plans rejected were "outline" only:

"The application is submitted in ‘Outline’ with all matters of details, except for ‘means of access’, being ‘reserved matters’. This form of planning application is intended to establish that the proposal is broadly acceptable in Planning terms and allows for detailed design matters to be addressed later."

It should be noted that Les Quennevais School site was not an "Outline" plan but a detailed plan, and despite the "in principle" acceptance of the Green Zone build for "significant public infrastructure", still had problems. So even if the "Outline" plan is accepted, there is a further gauntlet, with further time, on the detailed plans, something which the Planning Inspector warned about:

" It does enable the broad acceptability of the proposal to be assessed in Planning terms. However, the limited detail of the submission does inevitably create some complications and issues and the extent to which certain impacts and ‘design’ related matters can be assessed is limited."

There are some limits to this - as he noted "The set of parameter plans, elevations and sections seek to define the maximum ‘envelope’ of the new buildings in terms of their siting, size and heights." There are also a set of principles. The Planning Inspector sees this as legitimate, but notes that it does mean
further work would need to be done on the detailed planning application.

As the application itself states: "The Applicant respectfully requests the Inspector to recommend, on the basis of the objective and independent expert evidence presented, that conditional outline planning permission be granted."

Other comments on this from the Inspector which are significant:

"An outline planning application essentially splits the planning process into two parts. Whilst this will ultimately take longer than a single, detailed planning application, it can be useful when the principle of a proposed development is uncertain. Outline applications can be used to establish whether a scheme is broadly acceptable before a fully detailed proposal is prepared and more substantial costs are incurred."

In other words, the broad outline might be acceptable, but the plans with details could still be rejected as needing revision  - as with the Les Quennevais School plans.

And he comments:

"Most notably, the ‘design’ is not fixed and remains fluid, its only limitations being set by the maximum parameters, should permission be granted. Environmental effects such as overlooking, massing and impacts on the setting of Listed Buildings have to be assessed on the basis of the 24 EIA Chapter 3 – Paragraph 3.3 25 EIA Chapter 3 - Table 3.1 42 maximum parameters and likely assumed effects, taking into account any mediation that may accrue from the application of the ‘design principles’."

"This is some way removed from the a more precise appraisal of a settled design. 146. In addition to the challenges for the decision maker, it must also be recognised that the approach taken carries some risks for the Applicant. This is because the parameters (such as building siting and heights) are set as maxima and may, for good Planning reasons, not be achievable at the ‘reserved matters’ stage. This could have some operational floorspace implications."

So while Outline Planning is a good way to curb initial costs, it lengthens the planning process which then has to jump through another hoop, and in this case, as the Inspector warns, the lack of details could cause problems in terms of the final design being viable.

In order to circumvent the Island plan, either the matter must be resolved to the States, which is is terrible as it circumvents principles with the Island plan, or the plan must be modified to allow exceptions for "elements of significant public infrastructure", as with Les Quennevais School, and as suggested by Geraint Jennings, and as with Les Quennevais, that comes with caveats and does not completely ignore the rest of the planned design. That way provides a solid ground for decision making, rather than just making up the planning decision dependent on the whim of the States of the day.

All this will require extra time, set against the time already wasted, and assumes that the States can actually decide matters!

And as John Henwood comments:

"The only thing more astonishing than the Heath Minister failing to say, unequivocally, that the plan to build a new hospital on the current site is dead, was to hear the Infrastructure Minister saying that the plan should be further progressed. Are they both completely insensitive to public opinion? Do they both live in some other dimension? The new hospital issue has been running seven years. Two Health Ministers have tried to get plans passed, both have failed. Another attempt at getting similar proposals approved will result in further procrastination and additional unnecessary cost. Stop this now. Draw a line under the failed plan to shoe-horn a new facility into an inappropriate site and move on with choosing a more appropriate location without further delay."

Don't go ahead with Gloucester Street and it will be ten years, we are told by the advocates of Project Fear. But the sorry history of plans failing to get passed shows at least seven years have passed, and it will be at least another three years before anything can be passed.