A small team of enforcement officers will be set up to crack down on building contractors and land owners that break planning rules.

The move is part of a raft of measures, including providing the director of planning with the ability to impose civil penalties, that have been proposed by the Bermuda Government to tackle developers who flout planning regulations.

Michael Fahy, the Minister for Home Affairs, told The Royal Gazette that the penalties from breaching planning laws would be in line with fines for breaching immigration rules. “I was disappointed that we did not get these changes through in the last year, but it will be done this year,” he said.

“To ensure we see it through we will likely need to appoint a small team of enforcement officers to develop and handle cases.

“We simply do not have the capability to deal with all the offences and we are not as proactive as we would like.

“We have not set the scale of the civil penalties as yet, but if you take immigration where a first offence is a $5,000, a second offence is $10,000 and then it becomes a criminal matter, it will probably be something similar.” Government’s more robust approach to planning infringements has been welcomed by the Bermuda Environmental and Sustainability Taskforce.

The group’s chairman, Stuart Hayward, said more still needed to be done to inspire understanding of the policy and encourage “voluntary adherence to the rules”.

Senator Fahy added: “The aim here is to change a mindset as people start to get fined and are held to account quickly.

“The other big thing about these changes is that we will look to enforce against the contractor as well as the landowner depending on the facts.”