Plémont: Seize the opportunity

For a start, we are in the throes of the worst economic crisis for 80 years and budgets, we are repeatedly reminded, are already under severe pressure. What’s more, it is argued, returning Plemont to nature, albeit of the modern, managed variety, would be of direct benefit only to the kind of people who like that kind of thing. Significantly, there is also a financially attractive offer on the table from the landowner and would-be developer, Trevor Hemmings, who is willing to cede two-thirds of the area to the public if he is allowed to develop housing on the rest.

None of these arguments quite trumps the unique appeal of the proposal placed before the States by the Council of Ministers. They and the National Trust, working in welcome harmony, have correctly identified the kind of opportunity to advance the public good which comes along only once in several generations. It is up the States to seize it boldly, just as their predecessors did decades ago to preserve St Ouen’s Bay.

The sums involved – a potential £6m donation to the trust appeal – are indeed large in pure terms but they are relatively small compared to the overall States budget, to other, less valuable types of public spending or to the sort of sums which any self-respecting Treasury Minister would no doubt have tucked away up some capacious sleeve for exactly this kind of eventuality. In return, the public of Jersey would acquire in perpetuity something beyond price.

This small, overcrowded Island has precious few wild and open places, with the emphasis on the word precious. The prize at stake in the Plemont saga is spacious, beautiful, peaceful and environmentally important, all factors on which no price tag can be placed and which, directly or otherwise, enhance the cultural and spiritual wellbeing of everyone who lives here. (And, if a commercial rationale is also sought, factors which also encourage the kind of tourism Jersey now needs.)

The Council of Ministers’ proposition is, moreover, fully in keeping with the decision to create a coastal national park and with the National Trust’s own popular Coastline Campaign. While it offers the chance for the Island’s government send out an important signal about its priorities, Mr Hemmings must, of course, receive a fair return on his investment.

He is in a strong position partly because the law allows planning wherever there has been development in the past and the area in question retains a set of derelict buildings from another age. That, presumably, is why the ministerial proposal includes the use of compulsory purchase powers if necessary, an extreme and unpalatable option but one that would be fully justified if the alternative were for Jersey to be deprived by a historical anomaly of a historic opportunity.