The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The Government has been urged to fix its main Planning law “sooner rather than later”, a leading developer warning that otherwise all development projects will become bogged down in “never ending Judicial Review” actions.

Franklyn Wilson, the Arawak Homes chairman, told Tribune Business that the Government “absolutely cannot” enforce and implement the statutory processes in the Planning and Subdivisions Act 2010 due to a lack of expertise, resources and manpower.

Effectively implying that it will cost the Government money it does not have to uphold its own laws, Mr Wilson backed Michael Major, the director of physical planning, as “dead right” for his alleged assertion that properly applying the Planning and Subdivision Act would send the administration ‘bankrupt’.

This, he explained, was because the failure to follow the Act’s statutory processes would potentially expose every Bahamas-based development project to potential Judicial Review challenge in the Supreme Court.

Speaking after the controversial $8 million Blackbeard’s Cay development became the latest subject of such a court action, Mr Wilson told Tribune Business that the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) had committed itself to amending the Planning and Subdivision Act in its 2012 election manifesto.

“They’ve not yet got around to it,” he said. “They will have to fix it.

“Whoever said the Government will be broke if they don’t fix it, is dead right. The Judicial Reviews will never end and they will be bankrupt. They’ve got to fix it, because the Judicial Reviews will never end and there’s no defence.”

Mr Major, according to documents filed with the Supreme Court as part of the Judicial Review action challenging the permits/approvals granted to the Blackbeard’s Cay project, allegedly told activists from the ReEarth environmental group that it was “too costly to hold public meetings on every development” and “if we were to do that we would be bankrupt”.

While Mr Major has yet to confirm whether that is accurate, Mr Wilson added: “Whoever said what they said, it seems from where I sit it’s a fair and accurate assessment.

“The Government will do well to fix it, and do so sooner rather than later.”

“What we’ve established now is that they [the Government] cannot administer it. It’s just not workable,” Mr Wilson told Tribune Business.

“The Bill calls for the creation of new jobs, new processes. To do it properly, the Government will have to spend a lot more money on staffing.” Recalling the Planning and Subdivisions Bill’s history, Mr Wilson said it was withdrawn from being presented to Parliament at the ‘11th hour’ after his daughter, Sharlyn Smith, sent in a 17-page letter detailing numerous issues and problems it was likely to cause for developers.

While praising Earl Deveaux, the former minister of the environment, for “correcting 80 per cent of the errors” that would have made the legislation “infinitely worse than it was”, the Arawak Homes chairman said other mistakes were left in.

“The fact of the matter is that the Bill sent to Parliament was flawed, drastically flawed,” he told Tribune Business.

“To their credit they fixed major aspects of the flaws, but didn’t fix all.”

The Planning and Subdivisions Act is a vital tool in the regulation, and enforcement, of all development throughout the Bahamas, and any inability to ensure its application will again raise fears about widespread unregulated construction in this nation.

However, other court-filed documents in the same Judicial Review provide further evidence that the Government has yet to even implement the infrastructure and bodies necessary to comply with/enforce the Planning and Subdivisions Act.

They suggest that an appeal against a Town Planning Committee decision, under Section 65 (1) (f) of the Planning and Subdivisions Act, is currently impossible because the Government has yet to establish the Appeals Board that will hear it.

“In the absence of the apparatus required (and provided for) under the Planning and Subdivisions Act for appealing decisions on the Town Planning Committee, the only remedy the applicant has is to Judicially Review the decision,” ReEarth’s Judicial Review submissions argued.

The group is arguing that the Government breached the Planning and Subdivisions Act in granting the Blackbeard’s Cay developer its permits because no public Town Meeting on the project was held, and no Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) made available.