Proposed Our Hospital access and protected trees (FOI)

Request

I understand that the proposed Our Hospital access road will require the removal of certain trees on St Aubins Road, Westmount Road and in People’s Park. Can you please provide the following information:

A

Do any of the trees proposed for removal have Tree Protection Orders (TPOs)?

B

Are there any covenants or other legal encumbrances on the site that relate to the use of the site and, in particular, the removal of trees?

C

Other than the Parish of St Helier and the Government of Jersey, is the approval of any other party required before the site can be transferred from the Parish to the Government and, if so, how will such approval be obtained?

Response

It is not considered that this is a valid request under the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 as it does not request information that is held in recorded form. Rather the request poses questions that require additional interpretation, expertise or advice. Each section of the request has been considered as follows:

Please note that until the final access route has been precisely defined it is not possible to say exactly which trees, if any, or pieces of land will be affected.

A

The phrase Tree Preservation Order relates to the statutory protection of trees in the UK and therefore no trees on the site specified in the question are subject to a TPO.

However, in Jersey trees can be protected in Law by legislation included in Part 6 Chapter 2 (Articles 57 – 64 as appropriate) of the Planning and Building (Jersey) Law 2002. Trees that are protected may be included on a List of Protected Trees, which can be accessed in the following link but, as that page states, not all protected trees are on the list and beyond the fact of a tree being on the protected list the establishment of other legal protections which might apply requires further planning and legal expertise.

Protected tree search 

B

As advised above, until the specific access route has been precisely defined, it is not possible to review any covenants or legal encumbrances. However, even with the route defined, establishing an answer to this question would require not just the retrieval of recorded information in the form of documentation of covenants or other legal encumbrances but also a legal interpretation of that documentation to establish the effects on the removal of trees. It should however be noted that such analysis will be undertaken as part of the planning application and will be open to public scrutiny and comment.

C

This question has not asked for information that is held in recorded form, but rather asks for advice as to approvals.