A reader, and lawyer, chimes in on the implications of the opposition to the Southlands development by senior civil servants in the Ministry of the Environment and the Department of Conservation:
This morning's news that both the Department of Planning's and the Department of Environmental Protection's officers have opined that the Southlands development is undesirable and not in the best interests of Bermuda may turn out to be quite a thorn in Government's side.The Premier, who has been swanning around with the developers and generally treated like royalty has repeatedly talked publicly in terms that suggest that the development will simply be rubber-stamped. The civil servants' reports to the Minister on behalf of their respective departments could be just what the objectors need to hang their hats on to launch a legal challenge, however. Although the Minister has a discretion to approve the development, either by way of the normal planning process (on appeal from a rejection by the DAB) or by way of an SDO, administrative law dictates that her discretion is fettered by the proviso that he decision be reasonable.
In a legal context, 'reasonable' has a specific meaning - a decision is unreasonable if it is such that no Minister could have reasonably come to it. It's a high standard for objectors to meet, to be sure, but when you consider that the only information that the Minister has to rely on is that supplied by government officers, who are clearly opposed to the development, there is certainly a reasonable argument to be made that any approval of the development would be perverse and, therefore, unreasonable in a legal sense. What this space - this could end up being very, very sticky for Government and put them in a tight corner...........
