Drawings and reports in relation to hospital sites under evaluation (FOI)

​​Request

Please can you publish any drawings / reports relating to the hospital sites under evaluation which are held by any States Department.

Response

All Scheduled Public Authorities (SPA) are separate legal entities for the purposes of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011. Therefore, if a request comes in via the States of Jersey central FOI unit it will be disseminated to the most relevant SPAs that are central States of Jersey entities. In respect of this request, Jersey Property Holdings who are at present under the Treasury and Resources department have responsibility for the delivery of the future hospital capital asset project and are therefore the most appropriate department to handle and respond to your request.

The information which is being requested is an ongoing project and therefore is being refused under Article 35 Formulation and development of policies (see below).

Exemption

FOI exemption(s) applied:

Part 5 Qualified Exempt Information

35 Formulation and development of policies

Information is qualified exempt information if it relates to the formulation or development of any proposed policy by a public authority.

Justification for exemption(s)

The request asks for drawings and reports relating to hospital sites under evaluation.

The future hospital site evaluation process is still in progress, with a number of sites being examined and a number of reports and drawings associated with the evaluation.

For the purposes of good government, the department in question needs the ability to put together the full evidence for the policy recommendation for Ministers without a premature disclosure of the option evaluation process.

It is therefore considered appropriate to use this exemption at this time to enable the department in question to finalise the work requested by Ministers.

This is a qualified exemption, so there is a need for the department to assess the public interest when making the decision as to whether the information should be released or not.

Ministers have stated their intent to make the outcome of the option appraisal process public and to allow the States Assembly to debate the recommended site choice.

However, until Ministers have confirmed the site choice, it is considered that the public interest would not be served by a premature release of site evaluation information that would potentially destabilise the neutrality of the evaluation process, would create uncertainty for the public, patients and staff on a key decision and which might have commercial implications for the owners of potential sites.