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FAQs

We have anticipated some of your most common questions.

Tibbalds Planning and Urban Design is leading the project team appointed by the Development and Planning Authority to create a Local Planning Brief (LPB) for the St Peter Port and St Sampson Harbour Action Areas.

This strategic policy document will identify opportunities for change and enhancement of these two important areas along Guernsey’s east coast, and will guide and shape development over the next 10-20 years.

This consultation is taking place before the Local Planning Brief is written in order to test and review emerging ideas for the brief and to get your feedback on the priorities for the document.

Both of the Harbour Action Areas (HAAs) are complex and support a wide range of activities and uses and so change will need to be carefully thought out and coordinated.

This page is a summary of the consultation material. We welcome your feedback on these initial proposals.

These pages set out key information about the emerging direction of the Local Planning Brief and summarises the work undertaken by the team so far.

At this stage we want to test initial ideas and principles with stakeholders and the wider community and to talk you thorough what we think needs to be included in the Local Planning Brief for the two Harbour Action Areas.

This engagement is about gathering feedback on this work so far, hearing any concerns or other opportunities you can help us identify and then using this feedback to shape the draft Local Planning Brief.

We would like you to:

The closing date for responses is: 12th April 2024.

A Local Planning Brief (LPB) is a type of planning policy document that is required by the Island Development Plan (IDP 2016). It will make policies and proposals for a specific area where there are strategic land use implications and wider issues to be resolved.

A LPB is required for the two Harbour Action Areas and details are set out in Annex III of the Island Development Plan.

The Harbour Action Areas LPB will be a tool to help manage development and change in a positive way. It will sit alongside the IDP and will be part of the planning process.

Over the last six months the project team have been making sure we have a good understanding of what happens in the two harbours, how they work and identifying opportunities for change that best support the island as a whole, its people, environment and economy.

The LPB will be a document that covers the full extent of the two Harbour Action Areas of St Peter Port and St Sampson. It will be based on evidence about how the areas work and what may change and contain a vision for the future of the two harbours. It will contain policies, principles and proposals along with a proposals map.

It is important that the LPB is complementary to the IDP and adds detail where it is helpful in making sure the right kind of development comes forward and the right issues are considered. It won’t be able to conflict with or change any of the policies in the IDP.

Once it has been adopted (see timeline below) it will be used to guide planning decisions within the Harbour Action Areas and will be a material consideration in how decisions are made. This means that proposals brought forward in accordance with the requirements of the LPB are more likely to be supported, subject to it also meeting other policies and guidance.

The IDP requires that the Harbour Action Areas LPB must set out a strategy for the St Peter Port HAA and the St Sampson HAA. Both areas are defined on the IDP Proposals Map (see plan top right).

The IDP sets out that the Local Planning Brief must consider:

  • The need for coordinated planning, so that different activities and uses work together
  • How best to propose mixed use development, that includes employment, housing and other uses
  • Going beyond purely functional matters
  • Change that will attract inward investment
  • Social, economic and environmental issues
  • The need for commercial expansion within the two towns and harbours
  • Historic setting
  • The future needs of a modern port that serves the island well
  • Reducing traffic and addressing conflict between different road users and pedestrians
  • How best to safeguard marine related
  • How best to address the risk of flooding into the future

The LPB is a strategic planning document and must include at least one proposals map, as well as policies or principles that enable decisions to be made around future change as planning applications are submitted.

Given the different approaches needed to phasing and the potential relocation of the port operations, it is likely that several different proposals maps showing different scenerios will be included in the LPB as well as a "decision-tree" to guide the process.