Closed petition Make St Brelade's Bay Jersey National Park with protected Tourist sites

Ministers responded

This response was given on 11 February 2021

The current Island Plan Review affords an opportunity to improve the planning policy regime that will shape the future of St Brelade’s Bay and its role in the island’s tourism industry.

The Revised 2011 Island Plan provides the planning policy framework that is used to determine planning applications throughout the island, including St Brelade’s Bay. This plan is currently the subject of review and is due to be published, for public consultation and States Member amendment, in March 2021.

The review of the plan provides an opportunity to look at whether existing policies need to be changed or new ones introduced. This allows consideration of matters such as the performance of policies in the current plan; along with other issues such as the island’s continued need for homes; and how best to respond to trends and the impact of the pandemic upon different aspects of the island’s economy, such as tourism.

To ensure that the new plan is well-founded work is being undertaken to develop an evidence base to help inform the review process. This work provides information to help ensure that the new Island Plan can best respond to the challenges that the island faces and help to deliver the community’s objectives. The evidence base is wide-ranging but there are some aspects of it which are of direct relevance to planning for St Brelade’s Bay, and which will enable consideration of some of the issues raised in the petition.

The first of these is a review of the Coastal National Park boundaries that are currently defined in the 2011 Island Plan. The current park boundaries include those sensitive and largely undeveloped parts of the island’s coastline that are most sensitive to development, where change would have the potential to undermine its landscape quality. Parts of St Brelade’s Bay are already included in the park, and the review will consider whether more of the bay itself, other parts of the island, should be embraced by it.

Secondly, work is being undertaken to look at how best the new Island Plan might support the island’s economy recover from the impact of the pandemic and other trends. Of particular significance to St Brelade’s Bay is how the plan might help ensure that existing hotels and other tourist-related businesses remain viable and can make the necessary investment in their product to ensure that they can best meet the expectations of visitors to the island.

Finally, a specific study is being undertaken to better understand what makes St Brelade’s Bay special to local residents, businesses and others who use, visit and enjoy the bay, to inform a new planning policy framework that serves to better manage the nature, scale and form of development and change here. The commissioning of this specific piece of work is a direct response to the need to revise the range of planning policies that specifically apply to the bay, and not just those related to the Coastal National Park and tourism.

The process of reviewing the Island Plan is a very open and inclusive one, where the draft plan, together with all of the evidence that is used to support it, is published and where all islanders can comment upon its draft policies and proposals. This provides an opportunity for those with an interest in the future of the bay to set out whether they consider the draft Island Plan meets their expectations and can help deliver the community’s aspirations for it. All issues that emerge from this consultation are considered by an independent planning inspector who will make recommendations to the Minister for the Environment about whether changes should be made to the draft plan in light of public comment.

The final shape and form of the Island Plan will only be agreed once the States Assembly consider and debate all of the issues raised by both the public and the planning inspector, which is scheduled to take place at the beginning 0f 2022.