Planning appeal costs (FOI)

Request

I would like to know how much the government / States of Jersey spends on average on managing and processing each planning appeal.

This should cover the total cost of the appointment of an independent inspector to deal with the appeal including travel and other expenses as well as all other costs.

Response

The Planning and Building section of Infrastructure, Housing and Environment (IHE) spent the following on planning appeals in 2019 – 2021.

• 2019 – £194,102.09
  
• 2020 – £103,722.38
• 2021 – £105,564.68
  

The Planning Tribunal which administers planning appeals is run by the Judicial Greffe.

Not all costs are assigned directly to each appeal, for instance, the Tribunal Service staff and offices are shared by all tribunals run by the Tribunal Service.   Therefore, calculating the average spend per planning appeal requires assumptions to be made about the allocation of these shared costs.

We have used data from the Tribunal accounts for 2019 to 2021. 87 planning appeals were heard during this period.  We have not included appeals which were not valid or withdrawn.

We have extracted all the spending directly assigned to planning appeals, including the cost of inspectors, and added the staff costs assigned in the accounts to the Planning Tribunal.

To allow us to arrive at an estimated total spending for planning appeals we have assumed 30% of Tribunal Service office overheads to be assigned to the Planning Tribunal. These figures are presented below:

*This amount does not include the Government of Jersey spending incurred by the Planning and Building section of IHE which is detailed separately.