The challenge
Throughout its history, St Helier has been at the centre of the Island’s economic growth and prosperity. It has developed and expanded in response to changing social and economic conditions, to provide the homes and amenities to meet the expectations of residents and migrants; and the infrastructure necessary to support commerce.
If Jersey’s economy is to continue to prosper, St Helier needs to continue to fulfil this role, to support a growing population and to enable us to continue to protect our coast and countryside.
Unlike the historical growth of the town, which involved the laying out of new buildings and streets over the surrounding countryside, the physical expansion of the town is limited and we now need to regenerate the town by finding new uses for old buildings and redeveloping other land and buildings anew.
To bring this about, we need to reaffirm a clear vision for the regeneration of St Helier to inform a programme of action and delivery.
To understand the issues and challenges, we will need to engage with:
We also need to recognise, celebrate and protect what is good about St Helier and to identify and tackle its shortcomings.
This is the task of the future St Helier strategic priority.
A ministerial team has been set up to progress this initiative, led by the:
Future St Helier: urban challenges, urban solutions' seminar
In July 2014 five experts in planning, architecture, housing, landscape architecture and transportation shared their knowledge with over one hundred people at a seminar organised to develop and define a shared vision of the future of St Helier.
The purpose of the seminar was to explore options and opportunities to regenerate St Helier into an attractive and popular town. They explained current thinking and best practice in urban regeneration around the UK and Europe and gave people from a wide cross section of design, planning, valuation and development on the Island the opportunity to question and discuss their relevance to Jersey.
This short film captures the purpose of the event and the topics that were discussed.
Watch Future St Helier video on YouTube
Public workshop and engagement
Public workshops have been held to engage with people who have an interest in the future of the town, this has involved:
- residents
- retailers
- business leaders
- representatives from community groups
The outputs from the first workshop, held in May 2015, have helped shape and guide the work to regenerate the town. You can see a summary of outputs below.
Identity and community (size 218kb)
Travel and transport (size 205kb)
Urban living and environment (size 487kb)
A second workshop, held in September 2016, reported on progress and set out some proposals for change to traffic management in St Helier. You can view a summary of the workshop, and all of the presentations below.
Workshop summary (size 671kb)
‘Story so far…’ presentation (size 2541kb)
Open space presentation (size 2156kb)
St Helier traffic management appraisals report (size 4773kb)
‘Post-box’ queries and response received at the workshop (size 595kb)
We also held a Street Art event, to find out what ideas the youth of St Helier might have for its future.
Street Art summary (size 278kb)
Street Art outcomes (size 1382kb)
St Helier open space survey
An online survey was launched in 2017 to find out how people access and use open spaces in St Helier. The results, published in the reports section, will be used to shape and inform the development of a new St Helier open space and public realm strategy
Royal Town Planning Institute conference
A planning conference was held in Jersey to look at challenges that St Helier faces.
Regeneration challenges of St Helier (size 5mb)
The conference, called ‘Planning for growth in sensitive locations’ also explored how other places have responded to similar issues.
Royal town planning institute South West previous event details
gov.je