Street parking for electric vehicles (FOI)

​​​​​​Request

A

Please provide details of any future strategy documents or Minutes for the move to electric cars which provides for power for residential on street parking in St Helier.

B

How many residential on street parking places are there in St Helier?

Response

A

Please see the links below for current Government of Jersey published strategy documents that make reference to electric vehicle charging plans. 

(Policy TR1)

Carbon Neutral Roadmap.pdf (gov.je)  ​

(Priority 4: Managing vehicle demand through parking measures)

Sustainable Transport Policy: Next Steps.pdf (gov.je) ​

Development work on future strategies is classified as policy under development and therefore this information is exempt under Article 35 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011.

B

A definitive total number of residential on street parking places in St Helier is not information held by the Government of Jersey, therefore Article 3 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 applies.   

The Residential Parking Scheme is controlled by the Parish of St Helier.  The applicant may wish to contact the Parish directly via the following email address: 

townhall@sthelier.je

​A list of public parking areas in St Helier is listed in the in the Road Traffic Jersey Order of 2006 as detailed in the link below:

Road Traffic (Public Parking Places) (Jersey) Order 2006 (jerseylaw.je)​​

In addition, further information is available on the Parish of St Helier website, please see the following link:

Resident Parking Zones (sthelier.je)​

and on the interactive map as linked below:  

Residents Parking Zones (arcgis.com)

Articles applied 

Article 3 - Meaning of “information held by a public authority”

For the purposes of this Law, information is held by a public authority if –

(a)     it is held by the authority, otherwise than on behalf of another person; or

(b)     it is held by another person on behalf of the authority.

Article 35 - Formulation and development of policies

Information is qualified exempt information if it relates to the formulation or development of any proposed policy by a public authority.

Public Interest Test 

The following considerations were taken into account:

Public interest considerations favouring disclosure 

• Disclosure of the information would support transparency and promote accountability to the general public, providing confirmation that the necessary discussions have taken place.
• Disclosure to the public fulfils an educative role about the early stages in policy development and illustrates how the department engages with parties for this purpose. 

Public interest considerations favouring withholding the information 

• In order to best develop policy and provide advice to Ministers, officials need a safe space in which free and frank discussion can take place – discussion of how documentation is presented and provided is considered as integral to policy development as iterations of documents are demonstrative of the policy development process. 
• The need for this safe space is considered at its greatest during the live stages of a policy. 
• Release of the information at this stage might generate misinformed debate in. This would affect the ability of officials to consider and develop policy away from external pressures, and to advise Ministers appropriately.
• Premature disclosure of this information may limit the willingness of parties to provide their honest views and feedback. This would hamper and harm the policy–making process not only in relation to this subject area but in respect of future policy development across wider departmental business.

Following assessment, the Government of Jersey has concluded that, on balance, the public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosing the information. 

It should also be noted that once a policy is formulated and published, the public interest in withholding information relating to its formulation is diminished, however, the use of the exemption can be supported if it preserves sufficient freedom during the policy formulation phase to explore options without that process being hampered by some expectation of future publication. ​