Pollution statistics by type and location (FOI)

Request

Could you provide me with pollution broken down by type (eg air, noise, water) and by geography (eg parish or postcode) and timeline (eg by year or year grouping) over the last 10 years (or max possible).

Response

Please see attached tables from the Environmental Health and Environmental Protection teams, both of which are sections of the wider Infrastructure, Housing and Environment Department.

Note that there may be a small number of overlapping cases between the two tables as both sections deal with water and waste pollution.

Environmental Protection

The Environmental Protection team responds to water and waste pollution incidents which are recorded in a database with the Parish location. Their spreadsheet shows the number of incidents each year from 2011 to date by Parish.

Statistics from Environmental Protection (2011 to 2021)

These reported incidents will have had varying levels of environmental impact, from no impact detected, to more serious impacts. ‘N/A’ is used when an incident is not based on shore. ‘Unknown’ relates to incidents where not enough information was given but the matter has been recorded anyway.

Environmental Health

The Environmental Health database was only established in 2013, so 2014 is the first full year of data held. Many of the incidents logged would be classed as a ‘nuisance’ rather than a pollution incident and may well relate to more than one incident type.

Statistics from Environmental Health (2014 to 2021)

The figures are split by pollution type but cannot be further split by Parish or by the nature of the incident (ie an enquiry, a request for advice, complaint, prosecution, and so on) within the 12.5 hours allowed under the Freedom of Information Law to respond to requests. We have therefore applied Article 16 but have provided you with as much information as we are able within the time limit.

Article 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.

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