Costs incurred for an internal investigation (FOI)

​​​​Request

A

Please confirm the total costs incurred for an internal Government of Jersey investigation into two employees in the Pathology Laboratory for unfair allegations. Please confirm how much was spent to bring the 'Independent investigator' [name redacted] from the UK to produce a report.

B

Please confirm how much has been spent in overtime payments to cover the two members of staff who have been pulled off shift patterns in their role in the Pathology Laboratory as out of hour MDT Biomedical Scientists. 

Response

A 

The requested information is considered commercially sensitive and is therefore exempt under Article 33 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011.

B

Health and Community Services’ (HCS’) Pathology laboratories operate a 24-hour per day, 7 days per week roster, with reduced service provision overnight and at weekends to meet Inpatient and Emergency service needs. Rotas are managed with planned overtime to cover the evening, night and weekend hours. 

HCS Pathology staff come under the Civil Servant pay group and, as such, evening and weekend cover outside of the daytime shift roster will be paid at a different rate. Records are not held in such a way that the specific costs requested can be identified without significant manual interrogation of data and creation and manipulation of multiple datasets. A Scheduled Public Authority is not obliged to create or manipulate data for the purposes of responding to Freedom of Information requests and therefore Article 3 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law applies.

Total overtime costs for HCS’ Pathology service for the fiscal period January 2024 to May 2024 (inclusive) are £89,635.44.

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 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).

Public Interest Test 

Article 33 is a qualified exemption and as such, a prejudice test has been conducted as required by law. 

When responding to requests of this nature, the Government of Jersey has to balance the public interest with the impact that disclosing this information would, or would be likely to, have upon the organisation and / or third parties. 

Whilst it may be in the public interest to understand the costs incurred in commissioning the report, protecting the commercial interests of the Government of Jersey is an essential component in controlling public finances, which, in itself, is in the public interest. 

It has been concluded that disclosing the requested information is likely to prejudice the commercial interests of the Government of Jersey and / or the provider. When considering the application of this exemption, it has been determined that whilst it is in the public interest to disclose information, this is outweighed by the necessity to limit any impact on the commercial interests of the Government of Jersey and third parties, and as such, Article 33 has been applied.​