Guernsey waste management (FOI)​

​Request

A
Please release all communications - both letter and email between Guy De Faye (Minister of Transport and Technical Services Department as he was called) and members of the Guernsey Government about Jersey's Energy from Waste Plant / Incinerator being used to burn Guernsey waste.

B
Please release all communications - both letter and email between Mike Jackson (Minister of Transport and Technical Services Department as he was called) and members of the Guernsey Government about Jersey's Energy from Waste Plant / Incinerator being used to burn Guernsey waste.

C
Please release all communications - both letter and email between Kevin Lewis (Minister of Transport and Technical Services Department as he was called or Minister for Infrastructure as he is know now) and members of the Guernsey Government about Jersey's Energy from Waste Plant / Incinerator being used to burn Guernsey waste.

D
Please release all communications - both letter and email between the following Chief Ministers - Frank Walker, Terry Le Sueur, Ian Gorst and John Le Fondre and members of the Guernsey Government about Jersey's Energy from Waste Plant / Incinerator being used to burn Guernsey waste.

E
Please release all communications - both letter and email between the following Chief Officers of the Transport and Technical Services Department as it was known and the Department for Infrastructure as it is known now) - John Richardson, John Rogers and Guernsey Government Departments or Committees about Jersey's Energy from Waste Plant / Incinerator being used to burn Guernsey waste. 

Response

The above requests, having been submitted by the same requestor and concerning the same subject matter are being treated as one request for the purpose of cost to produce a response as described in Article 16(3) of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011.

A search of the emails and other documents has been carried out.

Please note that email searches requested of the Government of Jersey are undertaken using an auditable email search engine. Searches can be undertaken only for a period of 24 months. It is therefore not possible to search for the emails of Guy de Faye, Mike Jackson, Frank Walker, Terry Le Sueur or John Richardson. 

Searches have been undertaken on the email accounts of the following, using the search criteria ‘Guernsey Waste’, ‘Import Waste’ and ‘Energy from Waste’.

• Kevin Lewis (from June 2018)
• Ian Gorst (until June 2018)
• John Le Fondre (from 2018)
• John Rogers 

This has resulted in only one relevant email which is attached below as document 11.

Searches have also been undertaken in relation to other written correspondence with the attached 14 documents identified.

Document 1

Document 2

Document 3

Document 4

Document 5

Document 6

Document 7

Document 8

Document 9

Document 10

Document 11 (Email)

Document 12

Document 13

Document 14

Document 15

Redactions have been applied in accordance with the following articles of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 (the Law). 

Article 25  Personal information 

 (1) Information is absolutely exempt information if it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018.

(2) Information is absolutely exempt information if –
(a) it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is not the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018; and

(b) its supply to a member of the public would contravene any of the data protection principles, as defined in that Law.

(3) In determining for the purposes of this Article whether the lawfulness principle in  Article 8(1)(a) of the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018 would be contravened by the disclosure of information, paragraph 5(1) of Schedule 2 to that Law (legitimate interests) is to be read as if sub-paragraph (b) (which disapplies the provision where the controller is a public authority) were omitted. 

Article 33  Commercial interests 

Information is qualified exempt information if –

(a) it constitutes a trade secret; or 

(b) its disclosure would, or would be likely to, prejudice the commercial interests of a person (including the scheduled public authority holding the information).

Article 33 (b) is a prejudice-based exemption. That means that in order to engage this exemption there must be a likelihood that disclosure would cause prejudice to the interest that the exemption protects. In addition, this is a qualified exemption and consideration must be given to the public interest in maintaining the exemption.

The Scheduled Public Authority (SPA) considers that the sections of documents redacted under Article 33 could prejudice the commercial interests of both the Government of Jersey and third parties. There may be public interest in the commercial information however it was considered that this is outweighed by the potential for commercial and/or financial damage.