Income Support payments (FOI)

Request

A

Would you please provide me with the welfare paid out by the combined parishes on an annual basis since 2000 up until welfare was centralised?

B

Would you provide the amount that the Housing department paid in way of rent rebate on an annual basis for the same period?

C

Would you please provide on an annual basis how much the Social Security Department has paid out in welfare since it was centralised and up to date?

D

Would you please provide on an annual basis how much was paid out by way of housing component for the period since this this was centralised and up to date?

Response

A

The Social Security Department does not hold information on Parish expenditure.

The information may be held by the parishes and you may wish to re-direct this part of your request to foi@parish.gov.je

B

The Social Security Department does not hold information on the expenditure of the former Housing Department.

The information may be held by Andium Homes and you may wish to re-direct this part of your request to foi@andiumhomes.je 

C

Welfare no longer exists in Jersey. The nearest equivalent is Income Support, which encompasses a range of other benefits and is therefore not directly comparable to welfare. Information on the annual expenditure of Income Support is publically available as part of the Social Security Department’s Annual Report. 

D

Information on the annual value of Income Support is publically available as part of the Social Security Department’s Annual Report. Where information is provided on the expenditure of individual components (housing component) it is available as an estimate based on a percentage of the total expenditure of Income Support. This information is available from 2012 onwards.

To generate comparable information for the years prior to the 2012 Annual Report would require analysis of over 6000 individual Income Support claims. This could not be accomplished by the Department within 12.5 hours and so this part of the answer falls under the exemption given by Article 16(1).

Information prior to 2012 is publicly available as part of the States of Jersey Financial Report and Accounts.

The 2012 to 2015 Social Security Annual Reports are available at the following links:

2015 Social Security Annual Report

2013 Social Security Annual Report

2012 Social Security Annual Report

The States of Jersey Financial Report and Accounts are available at:

States of Jersey Accounts

Exemptions applied

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

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.

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.