Regulations are hampering attempts to redevelop glasshouse sites, a former tomato farmer has said after a 23-year battle with the Planning Department left his family with mounting debt and an uncertain future.
Kevin Hervé, who operated Les Tours Farm in St Clement for decades, has urged the government to ease the rules and raised concerns that derelict sites pose safety risks.
His comments come after the government recently clarified rules for the redevelopment of derelict and redundant glasshouses, following a consultation earlier this year that indicated support for allowing some sites to be used differently.
Mr Hervé’s farm, which once supplied tomatoes to major UK supermarkets such as Tesco and Waitrose, ceased operations in 2008 due to increased competition from larger European producers that led to the collapse of the local industry.
With no government subsidies or support, Mr Hervé said his business, like many others in the Island, could not compete.
“I went out of business,” Mr Hervé explained. “And virtually every other Island tomato grower also went out of business that year.”
Since then, the glasshouses at Les Tours Farm have fallen into disrepair.
Mr Hervé’s insurance company declared the structures unsafe for use in 2014 – which ended any possibility of renting them out.
In November, Storm Ciarán caused further damage. St Clement was among the hardest-hit areas and the severe weather included a tornado – measured as the most powerful in the British Isles in 70 years – which tore through the parish.
The extent of the damage has made Mr Hervé worry about the safety of children who play nearby.
“If a child falls through that greenhouse and gets badly injured or even worse, who’s responsible?” he asked.
“I don’t want anybody injured, and they [the greenhouses] are dangerous.”
Despite spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on site maintenance and planning applications over the past 23 years, the Hervé family’s proposals have repeatedly been rejected.
A recent application to build seven houses and storage units at the site, while also restoring half of the area for agricultural use, was turned down.
“The planning office didn’t give us any advice or help at all,” Mr Hervé said.
“We’ve spent three- to four-hundred-thousand pounds so far, and it would take another million to get the site back to just soil.
“There’s no money to do that.”
Mr Hervé claimed current planning policies were not only inflexible, but also inconsistent.
He said that while his application was rejected, other landowners had been granted permission to build houses on similar sites.
“They [Planning] need to examine their own policy and talk to the people who have been in the industry for so long,” he said.
“It’s a big, long history of planning nonsense. They’ve not come up with any solution. They’ve come up with the same old nonsense.”
The government has recently taken steps to address the issue of derelict and redundant glasshouses.
Under the Bridging Island Plan, commercial glasshouses are considered temporary structures that should be removed at the end of their economic life, with the land returned to farming.
However, earlier this year, the government sought Islanders’ views on allowing some glasshouse sites to be redeveloped.
Following this consultation, officials published more detailed assessment criteria for the redevelopment of such sites.
This supplementary planning guidance, published last month, allows for the redevelopment of glasshouse sites only in “exceptional circumstances”.
Mr Hervé said that his situation should qualify as exceptional and that the criteria remains too restrictive. He added that more needs to be done to find practical solutions for these derelict sites.
In response, Environment Minister Steve Luce said: “The supplementary planning guidance offers more detail for the owners of derelict glasshouse sites to establish what options may be available to them, but it cannot change the policy as detailed in the Island Plan.
“It was therefore never the intention for the SPG to allow for the turning of derelict glasshouses into housing sites overnight. However, it continues to be the case that in certain circumstances a proposal could be made to allow some development in exchange for major environmental gains for Islanders.”
