Environmental Impact Assessments (FOI)

Request

A

The number of requests made to the Planning Department to waive the requirement to submit an environmental impact assessment as set out in the Planning and Building (Environmental Impact) (Jersey) Order 2006 in the last 10 years.

B

The number of those requests that have been approved and the reason why they were approved.

C

The level the decisions were made at. ie Planning Officer, Director, Chief Officer, Minister.

D

A description of the types of development the approved requests were for.

Response

A

Our systems are not configured in a way that will allow us to extract the details you have requested. A manual search of our records would be required in order to obtain this information. We estimate that it will take us in excess of 12.5 working hours to locate and retrieve the data in reference to your request. This part of your request, therefore, will not be processed further.

A scheduled public authority that has been requested to supply information may refuse to supply the information if it estimates that the cost of doing so would exceed an amount determined in the manner prescribed by Regulations.

B

We have been able to determine, though a manual search of Ministerial Decisions on the Government of Jersey Website, that the Minister for Environment has waived the requirement for an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) in the cases listed below. As this was a manual search spanning 10 years we cannot guarantee that this represents all of the cases where with the requirement for an EIA was waived.

We have provided a link to the Ministerial Decision page of the Government of Jersey website should you wish to carry out your own search.

Ministerial decisions

Whilst these decisions are exempt under Article 23 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 as they are already available for you to view on www.gov.je we have provided links to those that we have been able to locate.

MD-PE-2018-0007

MD-PE-2018-0024

MD-PE-2017-0029

MD-PE-2017-0001

MD-PE-2017-0094

MD-PE-2017-0054

MD-PE-2016-0166

MD-PE-2014-0038

MD-PE-2013-0131

C

All decisions to waive the requirement for an EIA are made at Minister level.

D

Please refer to the links provided in response B above, for types of developments where EIA’s have been waived.

Articles applied

Article 16 A scheduled public authority may refuse to supply information if cost excessive

(1) A scheduled public authority that has been requested to supply information may refuse to supply the information if it estimates that the cost of doing so would exceed an amount determined in the manner prescribed by Regulations.

Regulation 2 (1) of the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014 allows an authority to refuse a request for information where the estimated cost of dealing with the request would exceed the specified amount of the cost limit of £500. This is the estimated

cost of one person spending 12.5 working hours in determining whether the department holds the information, locating, retrieving and extracting the information.

Article 23 Information accessible to applicant by other means

(1) Information is absolutely exempt information if it is reasonably available to the applicant, otherwise than under this Law, whether or not free of charge.

(2) A scheduled public authority that refuses an application for information on this ground must make reasonable efforts to inform the applicant where the applicant may obtain the information.