Planning Authority prepares districts’ land use plan |22 October 2022

The meeting at the Roche Caiman community centre (Photo: Louis Toussaint)

• Holds a series of consultative meetings

The Seychelles Planning Authority is holding a series of consultative meetings in all districts to discuss a new land use plan for each one of them, which will be eventually be compiled into a national land use plan.

This week it held a meeting at the Roche Caiman community centre to present the plans of the Roche Caiman and Mont Fleuri districts to their residents, to get their views on the plans.

Speaking to Seychelles NATION, the chief executive of the authority, Angela Servina, said that one of the authority’s mandates under the new Physical Planning Act 2021 is to produce land use plan for all districts on inner islands, as well as the outer islands.

According to Ms Servina they have already done some work and they have a draft plan for each district which is under review.

“We could not do anything during Covid -19 so we took the time to hold meetings with other stakeholders, gather data and other useful information for the plan, and now we can put it to the public, when the situation has improved in the country,” explained Ms Servina.

It should be noted that already the plans have been presented to inhabitants of Anse Royale, St Louis, Bel Air, English River, Mont Buxton, Roche Caiman, Mont Fleuri, Plaisance and Les Mamelles.

The Roche Caiman and Mont Fleuri meeting had a low turnout with only a dozen persons present. Ms Servina reminded the public that the meetings were the ideal forum for them to share their ideas prior to any development and has invited them to participate.

She added that although they are looking at everything in each district, the changes to the draft plan will not be extreme.

“For example we are not removing residential areas to replace it with agriculture or tourism projects, but there are some things that will be re-looked at. For example we already have the Seychelles Strategic and Land Use Development Plan which looks at Seychelles in general so we need to integrate these two. We are departing from having facilities at district level to a regional basis, providing one facility for several districts,” she explained.

The Seychelles Planning Authority has already presented the Anse Royale land use plan to the cabinet of ministers for their approval, following their public discussion and it plans to carry out minor changes on the document before starting procedures to turn it into a legal document.

“Anse Royale will be the first to be published in the gazette and eventually approved becoming a legal document and we will go through the same process for all other districts, as and when we complete the consultation exercise and get the approval of the cabinet of ministers.”

The Planning Authority is appealing to the public to take part in this important nationwide exercise.

“Don’t wait for a tourism project to start in your district and then to protest. This is where it starts, take part in the consultation meetings, give your views and share your ideas about what you want to see in your district,” she concluded.

The Seychelles Planning Authority plans to complete the exercise within two years, and for Seychelles to have its first national land use plan.

The document will be for a ten-year period.

Once it completes the national land use plan it will work on the development plan.