Good News!

For those of you who have been following this long running saga you’ll be aware of my position on the proposed private marina and housing development on Ramsey South Beach and the steps i’ve taken to date to try and honour the commitments I made in my manifesto

There are a lot of steps that would need to be completed in order for this project to progress, but the important two are:

1) A lease from the Department of Infrastructure; and

2) Planning permission

So these are the two things needed to influence to help protect our valuable coastline.

Here’s the current position on each:

1 – Department of Infrastructure Lease

The Department of Infrastructure have advised me by e-mail on the 25th May that they have decided to CLOSE the procurement process for the proposed lease without granting a lease.

2 – Planning Permission

This one is a bit trickier as there’s nothing anyone can do to stop planning permission being applied for.

But…

There are things we can do to reduce the chances of planning permission being granted and a big one is happening right now!

The Draft Area Plan for the North and West is currently out for consultation – and it currently DOES NOT propose to zone the South Beach for any development. In fact the proposed site (labelled RM010) was specifically EXCLUDED by the planning policy team after being suggested for inclusion. IOM Newspapers have a pretty good article here explaining this a bit more.

The Draft Area Plan is huge and has a lot of significant policy proposals in that will help protect not just the South Beach but other areas of environmental importance too.

I’m not going to reproduce all of the relevant parts here because there are so many but as an example:

The Draft Area Plan proposes the following landscape policy

I would encourage people to read through the Draft Area Plan and make submissions as part of the current consultation – click the button below to find out more about how to get more information, the drop in events and how to provide feedback to the planning policy team.

In Summary

The Department of Infrastructure closing its leasing process is a big positive move – as without their agreement there’s no way to actually build anything on the beach!

The draft Area Plan is clear about no development on the beach, and so whilst we can’t be 100% certain this will stop any further proposals, (as even if the site isn’t included in the Area Plan a planning application can still be made) as long as we make sure the final plan that goes before Tynwald maintains this approach then we will have secured protection in the planning system as far as possible – as getting planning permission for something that is outside the scope of the plan is a very big uphill battle.