Response to Seafront Enhancement Project

The seafront enhancement could provide a significant opportunity to embed physical activity, accessible to everyone, as a key principle in all decisions about developing the island. The organisations who have produced this response are: The Youth Commission of Guernsey and Alderney; the Guernsey Sports Commission; the Guernsey Sailing trust and the Health Improvement Commission for Guernsey & Alderney and the Guernsey Island Games 2021

The Seafront enhancement project provides Guernsey with a unique opportunity to reshape one of the most significant sections of the island’s landscape. The seafront enhancement steering group is to be congratulated for its willingness to engage with all sectors of the community. We particularly welcome the creativity, imagination and openness to new ideas that has been generated by the consultation. Based on a meeting of the groups above on 7th December 2018, this document outlines a set of core principles that we would strongly advocate are taken into account in the seafront enhancement project.

Being Active as a response to climate change

The focus of our response is to highlight the importance of physical activity, sport and well-being. However closely aligned to the spirit of well-being is that any future planning must take into consideration the impact of climate change and in particular sea level rise and storm surges. Some of these considerations will be significant engineering projects that seek to protect the coastline however the principle of mitigating the effects of global warming must also be addressed by small step changes when advancing change. Sustainability in future planning should be a given a priority.

Using the harbour development to encourage people to be more active and engage more in the natural world would have the added benefit of lowering Guernsey’s carbon emissions. It is important that any building work that is undertaken, especially a large scale opera on that we hope to stand for many years to come, are built with the environment in mind and as sustainably as possible. Buildings and spaces
can also be used to educate and encourage people to live and travel sustainably and it would be great to see this being a key part of new developments in Guernsey.

See response and key principles in full