Policy and Reform Minister Chris Thomas has rejected calls from Middle MHK Bill Shimmins to review the Isle of Man’s Strategic Plan.

Mr Shimmins has a motion tabled for this week’s Tynwald sittng which would see members note ’the updated evidence papers submitted in June 2019 by the Cabinet Office which reduce the number of housing units required under the Isle of Man Strategic Plan’.

And he wanted Mr Thomas to report in October 2019 on the reasons for the change in the number of housing units required under the strategic plan, with ’special reference to the division of housing between the four area plan regions’.

However Mr Thomas told the Examiner it would be wrong for members to do this and called the motion ’misleading’.

He said: ’Firstly it [the motion] is badly drafted with factual errors, we are not changing the strategic plan. Secondly it is disrespectful to the inquisitorial independent inquiry process that is going on.

’He [Mr Shimmins] is giving the impression that all these houses have got to be built by 2026. That’s just factually incorrect. In the area plan for the east, ever since 2018 when we first published it, it started by saying this isn’t a plan only up until 2026.’

The Policy and Reform Minister also pointed to why the inquiry into the plan is needed as opposed to the matter being resolved by Tynwald on its own.

’The way to consider it is not in a one-hour or even three-hour Tynwald debate with members who are not completely involved as yet, because that is not the point,’ Mr Thomas said.

The pre-inquiry meeting is to be held on Thursday at 9.30am in the iMuseum at the Manx Museum in Douglas ahead of the full inquiry starting in September.