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| Mr Geoff Webber a British Planning Consultant |
CHARLESTOWN NEVIS (January 26, 2006) -- A British Planning Consultant has commended the Nevis Island Administration on its move to put in place a 15-year Nevis Physical Development Plan 2006-2021, which he said would place Nevis in a position for greater investment.
Mr Geoff Webber, Business Manager of Environment Planning and Transport, a multi- national consulting firm based in the United Kingdom, made the comment on Thursday while on Nevis conducting a series of workshops with government departments to explain the plan and its importance to Nevis.
Nevis is doing an entire island plan some islands have done a comprehensive tourism plan but you can't do that without looking at the impact on agriculture and everything else. In the case of St Lucia they have done a costal sector development plan. I believe that Nevis is taking a bold initiative.
"It's a very good initiative. As I have said there are so many economic and global economies that are changing. I think this is a plan that will be very beneficial that would help you make some hash decisions on investment," he said adding that the Plan would be a document which would "give the lead to investment of various departments because this plan will cover economic, environment, social and movement."
The Nevis Physical Development Plan which is being funded by the Organisation of American States and the Nevis Island Administration forms part of the Physical Planning and Development Control Ordinance 2005 which was passed in the Nevis Island Assembly in October 2005. The plan will promote the sustainable use of natural resources for economic growth, improved quality of life and health for present and future generations.
According to Mr Webber, who is part of an advisory body assisting the plan team of the Department of Physical Planning to prepare the island plan, there is an increasing awareness of the need for sustainable development/sustainability and politicians had become aware and that was a key reason for the plan.
He said also that there was a global, regional and local changing economic climate which would affect the future of Nevis and with the increasing affluence of people their demand for more services, all of which had implications for land use demands.
The plan is very much an integrated plan of policies and programmes that's not just for land use only but beyond that. It affects social services, education waste and all those activities and land issue requirements therefore it is a comprehensive plan.
"I think there is a trend in the housing market as well in a sense that in line with other countries your household size is going down in numbers not the demands for the house size but the number of people living in the house. It's a trend that is going down which means we need more houses for the same number of population so I think that will affect the plan. I think that when your land values start going up as they are, again, affordable houses become more important and that needs to be addressed in the plan so that everybody has a decent quality of house to live in," he said.
Mr Webber explained that the plan would be more than "just a land use allocation" but also one with policies. He said during meetings with the various departments, they identified a sound data base of statistics to build on and each department was asked to identify issues affecting them daily, in the next five and 10 years and what sort of measures are required to alleviate the bad ones and promote the good ones.
We are asking the departments to try to identify what they see as essential, what they see as desirable and some because we feel the plan must take account of the essential if we are talking about education there is desirable and we need to try and move towards that and there is aspirational and we have weigh those as well but the plan must be realistic and that's why we are going to have to make some hash decisions on priorities.
Of course we are only advising then the ministers would have to make those decisions. We see our job as advising on the comprehensive, holistic approach bringing all the departments together, he said.
According to Mr Webber, his firm began work on the comprehensive plan in January and expect to have it completed and presented to the Nevis Island Administration in November 2006. However, he said there will be continued meetings with the departments and a later public consultation before the plan is delivered.
"I will be returning in March to present a draft vision and strategic objectives for comment by the departments. Then we have to identify a series of policies, promotional ones, we don't want a regulatory plan which says you can't do this, can't do that can't do this. We want a flexible plan which has positive policies to do things that have a set of criteria and in order to influence the policy you must meet that criteria.
"We will be going away in May/June to write those policies in draft again, to bring them back and sit with various departments to fine tune them to make sure they are meeting their requirements because it is important that at the end of the day we get everybody to sign up to this plan," he said.
He said he had been charged with the compilation of an all encompassing plan for Jersey Island a 45 square mile island with a population of 90,000 in the Channel Islands just off the cost of France with similar issues like Nevis and whose economy was affected by the Common Market and the free movement of labour. The plan he said has since assisted investment decisions of all the departments there and had been successful.
