Working hours of the Judiciary (FOI)Working hours of the Judiciary (FOI)
Produced by the Freedom of Information officeAuthored by Government of Jersey on behalf of the States Greffe and published on
15 March 2021.Prepared internally, no external costs.
Request
Following on from the Carswell Report published in 2010 which showed information about the hours the Judiciary worked and what on I would like to know the following information for each year from 2010 to the present day:
A
Royal Court Statistics 2010 to 2021
Royal Court Sittings in days and half days
% of civil / criminal cases (in number of days sat)
Licensing Assembly sittings
Warrants issued
Production Orders issued
Note – Sittings of the Licensing Assembly are additional to sittings of the Royal Court.
B
A list of the names of all presiding judges during the period and the number of days they each sat in Royal Court in each year from 2010 to the present day.
C
Total days sitting in both the Royal Court and the Licensing Assembly by the Bailiff, Deputy Bailiff and Commissioners of the Royal Court in each year from 2010 to the present day. The days for the Royal Court and the Licensing Assembly should be shown separately with a final figure for each year showing the combined total.
D
The number of States meeting days for each of the years 2007 to 2021 broken down into ordinary sitting days and ceremonial days.
E
The number of days (and separately hours) spent by the Bailiff, Deputy Bailiff, Greffe Staff (ie Greffier, Deputy Greffier, Assistant Greffier), Assistant Viscount presiding over the States Assembly giving the names and hours of each Bailiff, Deputy Bailiff, Greffier and Assistant Viscount who sat for each year in question.
Response
A to C
The Judicial Greffe does not hold the requested statistics. In particular, the Judicial Greffe does not hold the number of Warrants issued or number of Production orders issued.
To answer the request for those areas where we do hold raw data, that data would need to be located, retrieved, and extracted from various sources and this would take more than the prescribed 12.5 hours to do that work. In addition, the raw data would need to be manipulated to produce the statistics requested. As allowed by Article 16 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 we therefore decline to supply the information requested.
The names of judges over the requested period are available publicly at the following link:
List of members of the judiciary of Jersey
The Bailiff’s Chambers is not a scheduled public authority under the FOI Law and therefore has no statutory duty to respond to requests under the law but has provided the following information with respect to 2019 and 2020.
The table below shows court days delivered in 2019 and 2020. Note these statistics do not include reading in preparation time nor time associated to write judgments:
| | 2019 | 2020 |
| Bailiff | 79.5 | 72 |
| Deputy Bailiff | 96.5 | 113 |
| Jersey Commissioners | 171.5 | 158.5 |
| U.K. Commissioners | 8 | 3 |
| Lieutenant Bailiffs | 11 | 7 |
Total no. of days | 366.5 | 353.5 |
D
The following table shows the number of separate days on which the States met each year from 2007 to 2020 and in 2021 to date (12 March 2021).
Year | No. of meeting days for ordinary business | Ceremonial Meetings | Total No. of meeting days |
| 2007 | 44 | 1 | 45 |
| 2008 | 50 | 1 | 51 |
| 2009 | 59 | 1 | 60 |
| 2010 | 49 | 1 | 50 |
| 2011 | 61 | 1 | 64 |
| 2012 | 34 | 2 | 36 |
| 2013 | 40 | 2 | 42 |
| 2014 | 47 | 1 | 48 |
| 2015 | 32 | 1 | 33 |
| 2016 | 32 | 1 | 33 |
| 2017 | 42 | 1 | 43 |
| 2018 | 33 | 1 | 34 |
| 2019 | 34 | 1 | 35 |
| 2020 | 59 | 1 | 60 |
| 2021 | 7 | 0 | 7 |
E
Article 3 of the States of Jersey Law 2005 states that, if the Bailiff and Deputy Bailiff are unable to preside at a meeting of the States, the Bailiff may ask an elected member, the Greffier of the States or the Deputy Greffier of the States to preside. Neither the Viscount nor the Deputy Viscount are therefore able to preside over meetings. The following table shows the length of time in total (as hours and minutes) spent by each person presiding in the States Assembly from 2007 to 2020 and to date in 2021 (12 March 2021). The figure in brackets for each year indicates the number of separate meeting days on which that person presided during the year for any length of time (ie it may not have been for the whole of the meeting on that day and more than one person can have presided on a single meeting day).
Table of those presiding over States Assembly
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 any fee of 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.
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.
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