REGENERATE GUERNSEY

Guernsey has a habit of ‘chewing with small mouthfuls’.

We like to solve small problems with small solutions.

The trouble with this approach is that we don’t realise we’ve got bigger problems until it feels like it’s too late.

For many of us, it’s starting to feel this way.

Our suburban sprawl continues to spread, with ever more ‘little boxes’ taking up what feels like important open space. We’re starting to feel full, and it’s bringing out the worst in us.

I’ve drawn a map of what I think we need to consider to help solve some of our many challenges.

Here’s a bit of a key to the annotations:

Main built up areas (purple):

A - Southern ‘Town’

B - Northern ‘Town’

C - ‘The North’

Primary Regeneration Areas (red):

1 - South Esplanade/Mill Street/Trinity Square

2 - Victoria Road/Union Street

3 - Le Pollet/Le Truchot

4 - Les Canichers/St John’s/St George’s Esplanade

5 - St Jacques/Collins Road/Les Ozouets

6 - Amherst/La Vrangue/The Coutanchez

7 - Halfway & Delancey

8 - L’Islet/The Bridge Corridor

Rural Regeneration Opportunities (orange):

R1 - Capelles

R2 - Cobo/L’Aumone

R3 - Albecq/Vazon/Richmond/Perelle

R4 - St Peter’s/Forest/Airport/Villiaze

The main built up areas are where we have already formed the majority of our infrastructure and services. They are where the vast majority of our population live. They contain a lot of open space that is immensely valuable to our health and well-being. They also contain a lot of underutilized ‘brownfield’ land - land that has already been built on (NOT just glasshouses!) Planning policies already allow development in most of the areas shown purple on my map. The problem is that it is costly to demolish and decontaminate brownfield land, and challenging to work in tight and often protected urban locations, so developers have historically preferred to put their resources into less complex sites.

The primary regeneration areas I’ve shown are those areas, after years of professional study and understanding, where I believe we should have large scale development frameworks in place. Large scale development frameworks would involve community collaboration and would identify important features and functions that need to be maintained and protected, but would also identify areas where larger scale development could occur, including opportunities for improving facilities for the community. Creating frameworks for these areas provides for future planning of infrastructure, including what’s desirable for walking, cycling, and the movement of larger vehicles. They would indicate scale, providing developers with the benefit of repetition or modulation, helping to significantly reduce build costs (making delivery of affordable housing more achievable) and they would help us see, and have a say in, what our future places could look like, including parks, public gardens and community facilities, along with opportunities for small, medium and large scale businesses. As we are, we have no such plans and development is occurring in an ad hoc way.

The rural regeneration opportunities I’ve identified are areas that have something about them already that might provide the foundation for establishing more distinct or coherent communities. They are locations where there are already established populations, where civic amenities, transportation, businesses, recreation and health functions are established, as well as having a mix of natural and man-made rural environments that people enjoy. Having specific community plans for these areas, focussed on the needs and desires of the communities resident there and supported by the island population as a whole, will help us to protect and enhance both the natural and built environment to the benefit of us all, identifying opportunities for new businesses, new housing and better protection for the open spaces we value so much.

These are presented as part of a conversation we need to have as an island community, and, in my opinion, these are plans and frameworks that need to be put together by us as a community, not by the States or the Civil Service. Let them get on with setting policy and delivering services. We can prepare these plans ourselves, as a way of telling our elected representatives how we want our island to look over the coming years and decades.

I’ve not included St Martin because the parish is in the process of preparing a Community Plan.

Community Plans and Development Frameworks can be sponsored or paid for by anybody, and put together collaboratively through community consultation.

Whether or not you agree with my map, please have your say and share which parts of the island you think would benefit from having a forward looking plan that doesn’t just set policy, but sets an agenda for the change, or no change, that our communities want.