Employment Land (Development Order) Project

The Employment Land Project sought to locate and bring forward one or two sites for use as employment land using a development order. This process has been overtaken by an increased focus on area planning, in particular the Area Plan for the East process. The interim findings of the Employment Land Project last summer showed that sites at the Nunnery and off Cooil Road had potential, but it was apparent that other work was needed ahead of the publication of any draft development order. Having weighed up the evidence, which includes an update to the Employment Land Review, it has been decided to subsume the development order work within the Area Plan for the East. The information published on this page may however be relevant both for those involved in the Area Plan for the East process and also the submission or determination of planning applications.

Call-for-Sites

The Department of Infrastructure issued a Call for Sites in July 2015 and started preparatory work on the project. There have been some changes to where the Planning Policy team ‘sits’ since then and as from 1 January 2016, the responsibility for Planning Policy has rested with the Cabinet Office.  

Maps showing the sites submitted, as well as the individual site submissions can be downloaded from this page.

Employment Site Assessment Findings

The initial results of this work are available in the report ‘Isle of Man Employment Land Development Orders Site Assessment Findings’ (May 2016) which is available to download from this page. The main report summarises the process, overall findings and recommends next steps. The report contains two appendices – the Site Assessment Framework and the results for each site.

This report identified that the preferred sites to be brought forward for development to support economic growth were at Sangster’s Field (DO2 and DO5), The Nunnery and work is ongoing to fully explore the merits of publishing a Draft Development Order for this area.

The assessment of Site DO9 could not be completed at the same time as the others, as it was the subject of an ongoing appeal. That appeal has now concluded granting Planning Approval for a car showroom. In light of this, the applicant provided a revised submission accordingly and the assessment of remainder of the site has been completed. The revised submission and addendum report (August 2016) are available to download from this page.

Site DO9 scored as high as the Sangster's Field sites. However, it was decided to await the update of the Employment Land Review before deciding whether it would be appropriate to take the Site forward as a second Development Order, or whether it would be more appropriate to consider the site as part of the emerging Area Plan for the East.

Settlement Boundaries

In order to help in Stage 1 of the assessment process, the Department used ‘Settlement Boundary Maps’. For the South, these settlement boundaries remain the same as those set out in the Area Plan for the South. For the East, North and West, draft settlement boundaries have been prepared to help in the assessment of sites. There may, in the future, be amendments to these draft boundaries when it comes to preparing ‘Area Plans’ for these areas. There will be the opportunity to comment on such boundaries when any new Draft Area Plans are published.

The following documents were made available alongside the Call for Sites as PDFs in the table below.