Cost of Freedom of Informtion requests (FOI)

​​Request

Per annum, going back the last 5 years, please can you provide the total costs to the States of Jersey associated with freedom of information (‘FOI’) requests and meeting the FOI legislation more generally?” Thanks in advance

Response

The information as requested is not held in a format for the purpose of Freedom of Information. It has been assessed that any information held would be on individual departmental financial records and the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 does not require a Scheduled Public Authority to manipulate data to provide a response.   While an estimate could, and has been made, that the costs exceed £1m per annum, this is an estimate and not a record of all the costs for the purposes of responding to an FOI response.

Article 3 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 therefore applies.  

In addition, it is estimated that to interrogate these individual records would far exceed the time limits prescribed under Regulation therefore Article 16 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has also been applied.   

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. ​