Submission - Anonymous - 12 October 2020

Written Submission from member of the public re Future Hospital Site 12 October 2020

I write to you in respect of proposition P.129 "Our Hospital Project: Acquisition of Land at Overdale". For context I am the owner occupier of the property  .

P.129 presents the proposed area of land that would be potentially subject to acquisition / compulsory purchase in order to facilitate the building of a new hospital at the Overdale site. Including within the highlighted area is a section of land, which includes   and two private houses that form part of the neighbouring Castle View development. The intention of the purchase of this area of land is seemingly to conduct highway improvements, specifically to widen that area of Westmount Road to better facilitate vehicle access. This will require the demolition and clearance of these 3 private homes.

What has seemingly been missed is that the acquisition and subsequent clearing of this land is not as straight forward as simply negotiating with the owners of those three properties. For context, Hillcrest and Castle View essentially form a small estate of 10 private houses, all of which share a single entrance onto Westmount Road. The entrance road, together with several common areas (including a percentage for art fixture beside the entrance), along with essential utilities (including a private sewer system) are in common ownership and there are number of rights enjoyed by all residents of the combined estate over that area. The proposition includes the acquisition of these commonly owned areas, including the sole entranceway to the estate. Therefore negotiation / engagement needs to be made with all 10 of the owners of Hillcrest and Castle View.

For the record, despite having an interest in the land that has been presented to the States for potential compulsory purchase, I have had no communication from Government on the matter whatsoever. In fact, the first I knew of the plan to purchase these properties and the associated land was the publication of the propositions in the States.

At the very least I would expect detail as to how the entranceway to the estate will be transformed (and retained to allow entrance and exit throughout) and how the various rights currently enjoyed by the other owners dealt with. The demolition of these three houses, and the associated common areas, will no doubt completely transform the estate, yet no information as to what that will even look like has been provided, either to residents, or to States Members.

The States Assembly are being asked very shortly to essentially green light the compulsory purchase of land, based on a simple overhead plan, highlighted in red to simply show the areas they wish to acquire. This fails to capture any of the necessary information needed to properly make such a decision, and from the communications so far, at least in respect of the properties of Hillcrest and Castle View, have not been adequately thought through.

I would therefore suggest that the existing proposition be amended such that the area that includes those three private properties and associated common areas of land be removed from the scope of P129. The matter of this area of land could then be considered separately, once a detailed plan has been produced of how this area would be transformed, together with an appropriate impact assessment. Given that this area, is solely concerned with the widening of an access road (and there are, as acknowledged in proposition P.123 other potential ways of improving access to the site being explored), I would not envisage that this would cause any delay to the overall hospital project, but would allow an actual informed decision to be made by the Assembly on a potential compulsory purchase that directly impacts on people's homes.

Thanks for your time.