Appointment of the States of Jersey Police Chief (FOI)

​Request

Can you please disclose the contents / minutes / video or by whatever means it is held details of the appointment of Robin Smith as the Chief Police Officer.

Please cover the overall recruitment to include his application, the job interview and the details of all / any other candidates and the reasoning why those persons - should they exist were unsuccessful in this position.

Response

The process to recruit into the role of Chief of Police had the oversight of the Jersey Appointments Commission where the process is conducted in a fair and open way and the appointment based on merit. Appointment is in accordance with Article 6 of the States of Jersey Police Force (Chief Officer and Deputy Chief Officer) (Jersey) Regulations 2017.

Full details on the process followed and details on the number of candidates considered were published on www.gov.je on 1 November 2019 at the following link:

Home Affairs Minister appoints new Chief of Police

Individual candidate application and interview records cannot be released due to data protection. Article 25 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 (Personal Information) has therefore been applied.

Article 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 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.