Opinion Article – Kim Smith, Executive Director, BEST

The Royal Gazette, March6, 2026

BEST (the Bermuda Environmental Sustainability Taskforce) is one among others (organisations and individuals) who routinely review and respond to planning applications, where proposed development would negatively impact land that has a protective zoning.

Additionally, members of the public contact us regularly with reports of suspected zoning infractions that concern them. Over the past couple of years, an increasing number of them have told us about derelict vehicles being stockpiled on private land, something that is more difficult to advocate against.

We are now a few months into the new year, and there are several longstanding planning enforcement issues that remain unresolved. Among the action requests/complaints submitted to the Department of Planning in recent years, there was one for excavation down on the coast at Pompano for which there wasn’t an application, and about which we got no feedback on our reporting of it to Planning’s enforcement section.

We are also concerned about the state of the now-abandoned site at Morgan’s Point/Carolina Bay, which was being used for the staging of equipment and/or where construction materials for other, unrelated construction projects have been reported.

Another case continues to cause concern — not because it lacks evidence or has gone unnoticed but because it has persisted despite being formally and repeatedly raised through established channels. What is now at issue is no longer awareness, but the absence of clear, effective responses by Planning to reports of zoning infractions.

The protected areas in Warwick are being degraded because the activities at that site is not being monitored and enforced by Planning, despite repeated notifications to them. The prolonged inaction by Planning in the face of clear zoning and environmental concerns suggests a significant systemic weakness in the department in respect to their upholding planning legislation and risks at least the perception of unequal treatment.

Read more here: https://www.royalgazette.com/opinion-writer/opinion/article/20260306/planning-issues-persist-into-another-year/