JEP EXCLUSIVE
THE owner of one of Jersey’s most talked-about properties has spoken out for the first time – opening up to the JEP about a turbulent two-year battle marked by legal wrangles, planning setbacks and strong public backlash.
Speaking to the media for the first time, Nadia Miller – who acquired the striking former Nude Dunes building as a result of loaning £2.1m to the owners of the failed business – said all she wanted to do was find a meaningful purpose for the building at La Pulente and retrieve some of her lost capital, as she urged authorities and the public to support her plan to open a two-bedroom holiday let and small hatch-style café.
Miss Miller, who is a full-time mother of four, said she had been “left with an impossible task not of her making” when the Nude Food café business collapsed in November 2023, the result of her lending money to friends rather than investing in their venture.
Since then, Miss Miller said that she had endured two and a half difficult years, including facing threats on social media to set the building on fire, discovering that its construction was not up to scratch, trying to meet an impossible requirement that its toilets remained public, negotiating Planning, keeping neighbours on side, and dealing with untruths and misinformation, including that she wanted to turn into a private ‘1(i)(k)’ home.
“The current plan to create tourist accommodation with a café is not my dream scenario but it resolves what seemed like an impossible situation: with the drains, with the water supply, with the neighbours, and with the toxicity about the issue,” she said.
“I didn’t buy this building, I didn’t sell it and I certainly didn’t build it. I didn’t want it and it’s only mine through default. I get upset, like everybody else, at what goes on in our Island and how things are not protected. I have a young family and care so much for this place.
“People can write terrible things online but if they came down here, they would just see a mum having an ice cream with her kids, and I’d invite them in to have a look around.”
The Nude Dunes story could fill an entire JEP but, to cut a lengthy tome short, after the restaurant closed, Miss Miller tried to sell the building but to no avail.
She has since changed its classification under bylaws to allow it to be rented as an office or other non-hospitality business.
In parallel, she has submitted two similar applications to turn it into a tourist let, with a café that uses the existing kitchen.
Both applications have been rejected following planning appeals. One of them was recommended for approval by an independent inspector but this was rejected by Environment Minister Steve Luce.
Miss Miller strongly believes that this application should have been passed and she is at a loss as to why the minister didn’t go with the inspector.
She will shortly launch a fresh bid for planning permission, hoping that the new assembly and/or minister might be more willing to break the deadlock.
If that doesn’t happen, she is prepared to take the failed application to the Royal Court for judicial review. There was a date set for next month but the action has been stayed in the hope, Miss Miller said, of finding a resolution and to avoid wasting public funds.
Miss Miller believes that much of the toxicity which has built up over the years has been based on misunderstanding.
Take the toilets, for example.
12 years ago, the public toilet block that once stood there was sold by the States to a private developer for around £100,000.
Part of the deal was that whatever replaced the building would have to retain public access to its toilets.
However, Miss Miller inherited a bit of a stink – toilets were built at the bottom of a ramp, but they were not disabled-friendly, they were impossible to insure, and – most significantly – they did not have the right drains.
The doors were open to the public at one stage but the complications of the sub-standard ablutions, especially their dodgy plumbing, made it untenable.
Ms Miller said: “Opening the toilets to the public may have solved one problem but it would have created 100 more. Instead, I have offered to pay to build a new toilet block close to the existing pumping system, but Jersey Property Holdings did not take that up.
“At the moment, we have a temporary toilet which meets more of the criteria than a building that cost more than £3m.”
As stated, there are many more chapters to this breathless saga: a flue rising from the building that is necessary but illegal; enforcement notices that Planning took against a fence and storage pod that Ms Miller erected; another official notice to stop the property being used as a home; and the desire of the Hideout kiosk that used to operate nearby to return to its original spot.
And let’s not forget a protest attended by more than 200 people in July 2024 against the self-catering plans.
Ms Miller energetically defends her position, arguing that she is simply trying to rectify mistakes not of her doing, and standing up to what she sees as some bad decisions by the government.
She said: “I do have sympathy for how the public and residents have been treated. Through no choice of my own, I have a building which I am trying to find a future for.”
