
Blog - JDC's reasons for Appealing South Hill's Planning Decision
The States of Jersey Development Company (JDC) has applied for planning consent on its South Hill development twice. On both occasions the Planning Officer recommended approval and the Planning Committee refused the application.
We appreciate that this is a sensitive and prominent site and we take the responsibility of achieving a befitting development extremely seriously.
We carried out a design competition for the architecture and it was the organic design that integrated with the landscape that we considered to be the most sensitive and respectful approach. The design also commits to a new level of environmental performance with the scheme designed to Passivhaus principles to ensure minimum carbon in-use emissions. We will also be assessing ways to reduce the embodied carbon as part of the detailed design process.
The latest Planning refusal introduces new reasons that were not specified on the first refusal notice for this proposed development. Furthermore, a number of these related planning policies are interpretive and subjective and the new planning policies introduced in the Bridging Island Plan, do not have the benefit of a history of decisions or local case law on how to interpret those new planning policies.
JDC is appealing the Planning decision in order to benefit from an independent expert's opinion on the interpretation of these subjective policies. This clarity will assist JDC in any future planning application that may be required to ensure that it aligns with the new planning policies.
If JDC is successful in its appeal, we would have the opportunity to deal with the concerns that some of the units were marginally underperforming in size as a result of being between 2% and 4% below minimum guidelines; JDC will adjust the plans in a straightforward way and submit a revised plan that can be treated as a minor amendment.