Rents levied by Jersey Property Holdings on refreshment outlet tenants (FOI)

Request

Could you please tell me the current annual rents levied by Jersey Property Holdings and Ports of Jersey on places of refreshment administered by these departments.

I would like rental information on the following types of refreshment outlets:

• cafes

• restaurants

• concessions

• kiosks

• ice cream vans

• mobile vehicle town sites

Response

The States of Jersey can confirm that the information requested in relation to Jersey Property Holdings is held. However, this information is exempt under Article 33(b) Commercial Interests of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 (the Law).

The rentals and licence fees paid are deemed to be commercially confidential. Rentals for individual sites are determined using a number of factors, including location, agreement type, duration, tenant obligations and other reasons that will provide differences in rental sums charged, which means that they are not directly comparable.

Having considered the public interest, the Department's decision is to withhold the information.

Ports of Jersey is not a scheduled public authority for the purposes of the Law. Therefore information relating to Ports of Jersey is not held information and will need to be requested from Ports of Jersey direct.

Exemption applied

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).

Article 33 is a Qualified Exemption and is therefore subject to a Public Interest Test.

Justification for the exemption

The information being requested is of significant commercial value and its disclosure would seriously prejudice the commercial interests of the States of Jersey. Disclosure of the rentals paid by the States of Jersey’s 46 tenants of cafes, kiosks and van sites would seriously harm its commercial interests as disclosure of such would undermine its own competitive position when negotiating new lettings, renewals and rent reviews.

Therefore it is considered not to be in the public interest to release this information at this time and this exemption should be maintained.