Planning Application For Vauquiedor Field Is Pulled

Policy and Resources says the chance of flats for PEH workers being approved on agricultural land were unlikely, under current planning policies.

The plan by the previous Policy and Resources, led by deputy Peter Ferbrache, caused a record number of islanders, around 350, to write to object to the application.

The field makes a valley between the Health Committee's corporate HQ and the PEH and is used by a duo of young farmers for grazing their cattle. It's in the centre of the picture below.

Now, under the new leadership of deputies Lyndon Trott and Heidi Soulsby, the planning application for 66 flats and substantial parking has been pulled. Deputy Trott says the swell of community opposition, among with other factors, made the new senior committee think again:

"We need to develop the most appropriate sites and be realistic about what is deliverable.

As other sites are now progressing, it is more difficult to argue that the development of the green field site at Bordage Seath is strategically important at this time, and it’s clearly a site that faces a lot of public and political opposition too."

Deputy Soulsby agrees:

"The possibility of getting development on the PEH field was low. It seemed like we were devoting a lot of effort to something that was unlikely to give us a positive return. It means we can use resources to a more productive effect."

Those 'other sites' are nearby and include the old Braye Lodge Hotel, which is around eight minutes walk from the PEH, the CI Tyres site in the Charroterie which is around a mile away and a mixed housing development right opposite the Oberlands entrance to the hospital.

The CI Tyres site will yield around 56 flats and, between them, they will provide a considerable number of homes and apartments for key workers.

Deputy Soulsby says nevertheless, more key worker housing remains a priority:

"We've got other sites in the pipeline. It's not as if it was all or nothing on this site. It was more a pragmatic decision to focus on those areas where we feel we can realise the need for key worker housing."

Stopping development on Bordage Seath site, as the Vauquiedor filed is known, was the subject of a political petition in the summer of 2022.

It was lost, in a compromise that would have seen a brown field site remediated if the PEH plan was developed.