Jersey Reds correspondence (FOI)

Request

Please publish the correspondence between the Minister for Economic Development and Jersey Reds concerning financial support from government to the club together with a copy of the agreement / contract / memorandum of understanding (MOU) entered into.

In addition, please also publish any other correspondence on this matter between the Economic Development Department and Jersey Bulls.

For clarity, I am interested in any correspondence between EDD and Jersey Reds. The people involved in the Department would be Mike King or Darren Scott as the relevant officers. Lyndon Farnham and Treasury Minister Alan MacLean would be the responsible politicians. There was certainly correspondence between MacLean and Mike King but if you do not have their emails because of the length of time please search for written correspondence and reports.

Response

Searches were undertaken on the email accounts of Alan MacLean, Senator Lyndon Farnham and Darren Scott. It was not possible to review Mike King’s emails as the system used for retrieving emails is limited to two years on a rolling basis.

No relevant emails were located in respect of financial support for Jersey Reds in the accounts of Alan Maclean or Senator Lyndon Farnham.

Due to the high number of results in respect of Darren Scott / Jersey Reds, the review was limited to emails between him and Mark Morgan, Chairman of the Jersey Reds as it was estimated that to review all results would have far exceeded the time allowed under the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014.

Relevant emails along with the Grant Agreement with Jersey Reds are attached below:

Emails

Grant agreement (redacted)

The attachments have been redacted in accordance with the Article 25 (Personal Information) and Article 33 (Commercial Interests) of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011. Duplicates, and emails that are entirely exempt under the two named exemptions, have been removed.

No relevant emails were located in respect of financial support for Jersey Bulls on any of the above-named accounts.

Articles 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 2018.

(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 2018; and

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

(3) In determining for the purposes of this Article whether the lawfulness principle in Article 8(1)(a) of the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018 would be contravened by the disclosure of information, paragraph 5(1) of Schedule 2 to that Law (legitimate interests) is to be read as if sub-paragraph (b) (which disapplies the provision where the controller is a public authority) were omitted.

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 / 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 financial position of both the Government of Jersey and the Jersey Reds, we believe certain financial information is commercially sensitive as the release of this data could affect the financial position of either the Government of Jersey and the Jersey Reds.