Absences from States Assembly meetings during 2023 (FOI)

Produced by the Freedom of Information office
Authored by Government of Jersey on behalf of the States Greffe and published on 26 October 2023.
Prepared internally, no external costs.

Request

Please provide a record of absent States Members from States Assembly meeting for 2023.

Response

The information requested is either not held or is accessible to the requester by other means and is therefore exempt from release.

The States Greffe does not maintain records to show Members’ continuous presence in the States Chamber (or otherwise) throughout States Meetings.  Some records are maintained that show absence or presence at particular points during those meetings.  

Minutes are prepared for every meeting of the States Assembly and made publicly available on the Assembly website. They can be found at the following link –

States Minutes (statesassembly.gov.je)

Each set of Minutes details those Members who were absent during the roll call (taken at the beginning of the meeting) and the reason for the absence. Where a Member is marked ‘en défaut’, no reason – or no allowable reason, was given. Often a défaut is raised a short time into the meeting, which is recorded within the Minutes, as are the times of arrival where a Member was not present but then subsequently takes part.

Whenever an appel (recorded vote) is taken, the States Greffe marks the reasons for a Member’s absence from the vote.  Where a Member was absent at roll call, but has not arrived, the reason for not taking part in the vote is the same as that given for absence at roll call.  Where the Member was present at roll call, or has since arrived when initially marked absent, but is not then present for a recorded vote, they are shown as ‘Not present for vote’.  Votes can be found at the following link –

Votes (statesassembly.gov.je)

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 information.

This response has been issued on behalf of the States Greffe. The States Greffe is responsible for the information held by (and on behalf of) both itself and the States Assembly.  Neither the States Assembly nor the States Greffe form part of the Government of Jersey and the Government was not involved either in the examination and retrieval of any information required for this response, nor in the drafting of the response itself.