Impairment and health payments from 2002 to 2023 (FOI)

​​Request

​A

Please advise how many people in Jersey with a long term illness or disability that has lasted or will last for at least six months are receiving benefit payments.  How many people in Jersey are receiving impairment or health payments?  Please provide the figures from 2002 to 2023.

B

How many people in Jersey are receiving Long Term Incapacity Allowance payments?  Please provide the figures from 2004 to 2023. 

​Response

Following an extensive review of systems, it has been concluded that the information, as requested, is not held in recorded form. To answer the request, the data would need to be extracted from various sources and manipulated, aside from taking more than the prescribed 12.5 hours to do that work, the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 does not require a Scheduled Public Authority to manipulate data in order to provide a response. Articles 3 and 16 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 therefore apply.

However, information relating to the number of claims made for the various benefits, rather than individual claimants, is already publicly available for the years 2007 to 2023.

The Social Security Annual Reports for the years 2011 to 2017 are at the links below.

Note the report for 2011 includes the figures for the period 2007 to 2011.

Social Security Annual Report 2011.pdf (gov.je)

​Social Security Annual Report 2012.pdf (gov.je)

Social Security Annual Report 2013.pdf (gov.je)

Social Security Annual Report 2014.pdf (gov.je)​

Social Security Department Minister's Report 2015.pdf (gov.je)

Social Security Department Minister's Report 2016.pdf (gov.je)

Social Security Department Minister's Report 2017.pdf (gov.je)​

On opendata.gov.je for the years 2012 to 2023 at the following link.

Customer and Local Services (opendata.gov.je)

Articles applied

Article 3 - Meaning of “information held by a public authority”

For the purposes of this Law, information is held by a public authority if –

(a)     it is held by the authority, otherwise than on behalf of another person; or

(b)     it is held by another person on behalf of the authority.

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.