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Development: Draw the line here – and now
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IN 2009 more than 7,000 people gathered on St Ouen’s Beach to say enough is enough. The Line in the Sand protest was a dramatic and very visual demonstration that a large number of Islanders thought it was time to stop further building development on Jersey’s magnificent coastline.
Whether this show of strength has made any difference or not remains to be seen – there certainly doesn’t seem to be any slowing down of coastline developments or applications. But perhaps, just perhaps, it made some people pause for thought and maybe turn their sights on other, inland, locations.
Which brings me to the point of my letter. Having helped to express many Islanders’ feelings over the despoilment of Jersey’s coastline, I believe it is high time to draw another line – this time in the ground.
The recent revelation that there are well-advanced plans to build on Field 528 opposite St Saviour’s School have left me shocked and angry. I don’t live by this field, but I do drive past it on most days and I am always heartened when the relentless frontage of houses and gardens gives way to this wide-open space, with its sweeping vista across to the picturesque farm buildings and the heads of the Swiss Valley trees beyond.
It is a space which reminds me I live in a beautiful Island, and that I am leaving town and heading into the country.
Every open field is precious, but this one has something iconic about it. And it is something worth preserving – and worth drawing a line in the ground over – whatever the merits of the cause assuming it can just be taken for yet another development.
Where do we draw the line when it comes to development, or the countryside? There has to be a limit. Our green fields are not an inexhaustible line of credit. At a time when we are reaping the financial whirlwind brought about by years of profligate spending, gold plating and a failure to accept make-do-and-mend policies, surely we should think twice about eating into our natural reserves.
Unlike financial reserves, once they are gone there is no way to replenish them. Consider Plémont: will we ever see it wrested from the hands of property speculators and returned to a natural state?
A group has been formed to fight the planned development. They need the support not just of those who live in the area and the parishioners of St Saviour, but also of the whole Island. I hope all like-minded people are prepared to say that enough is enough.
There is a line to be drawn in the ground somewhere. It might just as well be here.
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