The Bermuda Environmental & Sustainability Taskforce (BEST) has cited concerns with the process of the Bermuda Plan 2008.

The plan was approved in the House of Assembly Friday night and it provides zoning for land use and development policies for the Island, outside of the City of Hamilton.

BEST spokesman Stuart Hayward said: "The Bermuda Environmental & Sustainability Taskforce has been engaged in the process established for the Bermuda Plan 2008 since it was first tabled.

"We have had concerns about the process at various stages, most often our concerns have been about the nature of the process, in that no one knows how their objections to the plan have been accepted, altered or rejected of.

"Once a presentation has been made to the tribunal, each case disappears into a kind of black hole, with no information on any aspect of the case being available until the new plan is published.

He continued: "The Tribunal reports to the Minister, the Minister has right to accept or alter their recommendations and then takes it to Parliament, for the 2008 plan, Parliamentarians had one single week to read and digest 200-odd pages of dense material, and prepare cogent points-of-debate — an impossible task, in our view, if it was to be done responsibly."

Mr. Hayward said the plan does not allow for "in depth examination and cross-examination of proposed practice or policy changes" to the plan.

"For an individual landowner dealing with his or her single piece of property, a week may be adequate to prepare and present a case to the tribunal, but for an organisation such as ours, attempting to look at the big picture, the time constraints have been disabling.

"We were concerned about the time allowed to the public to peruse and make objections to the plan after it was tabled. We were concerned about big-picture aspects, most notable that more than 25 percent of the objections to the plan were attempts to convert land reserved for agriculture to residential or commercial uses.

"While each attempt may have had some merits, the overall threat to our food-production capacity needed far more attention than it was getting.

"We recognise the difficult task this has been for the tribunal members and those of the Planning Department, and we appreciate the assistance we received from them. However, as a process that will steer the development of our Island for the next five-to-ten years, it is seriously flawed."

The plan was approved by MPs.