Minimum distance of Industrial building from residential properties (FOI)

Request

Is there a minimum distance required to build a commercial agricultural building or industrial building next to residential properties?

Response

Information regarding the minimum building distances is exempt under Article 23 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 because this information is already accessible to you on www.gov.je within the Building Technical Guidance documents.  These are located within the planning and building section.

Approved technical guidance documents (gov.je)

We have however provided the following information to assist regarding some of the complex concepts contained within the Building Bye-laws (Jersey) 2007 (‘Bye-laws’)

Schedule 2, Part 2 (Fire Safety) addresses fire related aspects for buildings and the Technical Guidance Document 2 (Fire Safety) (TGD2) provides specific guidance regarding the prevention of fire spread between buildings.

Bye-Laws

Building Bye-laws (Jersey) 2007 (jerseylaw.je)

Technical Guidance re Fire Safety part 2 (TGD2)

Part 2: fire safety (gov.je)

The TGD2 states that buildings other than dwellings can adjoin dwellings provided that they are separated by fire resisting “compartment” construction such as a wall or floor.   For example, this would allow for a manger’s house or flat alongside or within a commercial premise as long as it was appropriately compartmented from it.

There is also further guidance within the document in relation to internal fire spread (to minimise the spread of fire within buildings) and external fire spread. The latter looks at the relationships of different uses and / or occupancy type buildings between each other having regard to the building orientation and geometry, distance to boundaries and the amount of “unprotected areas” that the buildings have.  Generally, this takes into consideration doors and windows that would allow fire to spread from one building to another.

Section 2.4 of TGD2 refers to the two common calculation methods used to determine the safe distances between buildings and boundaries.  Method one only applies to flats and other residential buildings, whereas, Method two applies to buildings or compartments of any use but both methods require buildings to be a minimum 1000mm from a boundary.

TGD2 also cites more precise methods of calculation and refers to the BRE report: External fire spread: Building separation and boundary distances (BR187 BRE 1991), which can be used instead of method one or two. This report includes the “Enclosing Rectangle” and ”Aggregate Notional Area” methods.

BRE report 187

External fire spread: building separation and boundary distances (BR 187) - Designing Buildings Wiki

We suggest contacting the building control section directly if further information is required regarding minimum distances.

Article applied

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