Short term incapacity benefit relating to stress claims (FOI)

​Request  

The Health and Safety Inspectorate has reported that stress accounted for almost 69% of all work related ill health claims for Social Security short term incapacity benefit in 2017.

Please can you quantify how much this related to in monetary terms?

Please also provide the quantity paid out in short-term incapacity benefit relating to stress claims over the four years previous to this too.

Response 

The manner in which data on work-related accident and ill-health statistics is collected and collated, i.e. via an individual identifying on the medical certificate that their claim for Short Term Incapacity benefit is related to work-related ill health or a work-related accident, does not enable the monetary value of all claims specifically related to work-related stress to be easily calculated.

To do so for 2017 would require all 862 medical certificates received during the year and which identified that the claim was associated with work-related ill health to be retrospectively reviewed on an individual basis, and a calculation of the cost associated with that claim to be determined. The time taken to retrieve, evaluate and calculate the information requested would take in excess of 12.5 hours and is therefore subject to the exemption provided by Regulation 2(1) of the Freedom of Information (Costs)(Jersey) Regulations 2014. 

Article applied

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

(1)     A scheduled public authority that has been requested to supply information may refuse to supply the information if it estimates that the cost of doing so would exceed an amount determined in the manner prescribed by Regulations.

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.