Independent Jersey Care Inquiry panel travel costs (FOI)

Request

Please kindly provide a list of the dates in which the members of the Independent Jersey Care Inquiry Panel visited Jersey, where they stayed and the amount billed in each case (price per night, plus additional spending such as meals and so on). If it does not fall outside the 12.5h allocation, please also provide flight costs, and list whether the flight was economy or business class in each case.

Response

The attached document is extracted from the States of Jersey corporate travel booking system and lists the dates Care Inquiry panel members were in Jersey, together with flight costs and class of travel, between December 2013 and June 2016. Names and routings have been removed from the data under Article 25 (Personal information) of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 (the Law).

Care Inquiry panel travel details

From the information obtained from the travel booking system the total cost of accommodation for members of the Care Inquiry panel between December 2013 and June 2016 was £222,940.

It is not possible to provide details of individual accommodation providers and rates as the rates paid are commercially confidential between the States of Jersey and the accommodation providers, therefore Article 33 (Commercial Interests) of the Law has been applied.

Car hire and rail travel were also booked through the States of Jersey corporate travel booking system at a cost of £3,051.

After June 2016 the Care Inquiry panel members were no longer travelling to the Island so often nor did they stay for long periods. From that date they booked their own flights and accommodation and submitted expenses claims. It is not possible to provide the breakdown of this additional travel to / from Jersey within the 12.5 hours permitted under Article 16 of the Law as numerous individual invoices would need to be reviewed.

Due to the number of invoices requiring review it is impossible to provide a breakdown of any other spending such as meals within the 12.5 hours permitted under Article 16 of the Law.

Exemptions applied

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 2005.

(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 2005; and

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

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).

Prejudice and public interest test

Article 33 (b) allows an authority to refuse a request for information where its disclosure would, or would be likely to, prejudice the commercial interests of a person (including the scheduled public authority holding the information). Whilst we accept that the public may have an interest in the preferred rates obtained by the States of Jersey for accommodation, we believe the rates are commercially sensitive as they are the outcome of negotiations between parties and that the release of this data could affect the negotiation of future rates and the relationship with the corporate travel company.

Article 16 A scheduled public authority may refuse to supply information if cost excessive

(1) A scheduled public authority that has been requested to supply information may refuse to supply the information if it estimates that the cost of doing so would exceed an amount determined in the manner prescribed by Regulations.

Regulation 2 (1) of the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014 allows an authority to refuse a request for information where the estimated cost of dealing with the request would exceed the specified amount of the cost limit of £500. This is the estimated cost of one person spending 12.5 working hours in determining whether the department holds the information, locating, retrieving and extracting the information.