Civil servant (Jersey) compromise agreements (FOI)

​​Request

I would like to gather information on the following and please advise how I go about it! Pay offs given to Civil Servants / Officers / Officials and any other person contracted by the Public of the Island including States owned companies and businesses when their employment or contracts were terminated and including any pay offs to employees etc where their post was not being replaced i.e. voluntary retirement.

A.

Please supply and name the departments, the grades and individual amounts paid to each former employee. I do not want individual names.

B.

Please supply for the years 2009 to and including 2014.

C.

What was the amount given to [name redacted] when [they] left the employment of the [data redacted]?

Response

States of Jersey Compromise Agreements

A compromise agreement is a legally binding agreement in which an employee (or ex-employee) agrees not to pursue particular claims in relation to his or her employment or its termination, which is usually accompanied by a financial settlement that is considered to be in full and final settlement of any claims that might have been pursued by either party. Typically a financial settlement will recognise three elements:

1. payments due in respect of an unexpired notice period as specified in the employee’s contract of employment;

2. payments due in respect of any other provisions of the contract of employment (e.g. accrued holiday entitlements); and

3. where appropriate, compensation for loss of office; in such cases, employees have rights under employment law and therefore could be paid to the level of award which an employment tribunal may make if an application were to be made on the grounds of unfair dismissal (such awards are typically limited to amounts equal to six months’ salary).
A compromise agreement is justified if it permits the resolution of a situation that is undermining a department’s performance at a reasonable cost; they are normally mutually beneficial to both parties, employer and employee, and are accompanied by a confidentiality clause.

Whilst it is important that we are transparent about the use of public money the duty of transparency must be balanced against the personal rights to privacy of former employees who have signed compromise agreements. Therefore the data has been presented in a way that will not identify former employees as this information is personal information and so is exempt under Article 25 of the Freedom of Information Jersey) Law 2011 (the “FOI Law”), which refers to personal information. The information cannot be disclosed because its disclosure to a member of the public would contravene one or more of the data protection principles, which are set out in Part 1 of Schedule 1 to the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2005.

As a public authority, the States of Jersey must observe all of the data protection principles when processing personal data. The exemption from the duty to disclose personal data, where to do so would breach a data protection principle, is an absolute exemption, therefore the public interest test in Part 2 of the FOI Act does not apply.

However, we are able to provide you with the following table, which identifies the number of compromise agreements/ pay offs that occurred between 2009 and 2014 summarising the amounts paid.

Example reasons for compromise agreements are:

• where an employee leaves following a management reorganisation which dramatically changes their terms of employment.
• a breakdown of relationships to the extent that a swift resolution is necessary to ensure there is no detrimental effect upon services

The level/ positions held by the former employees were:

• Civil Service/ Chief Officer roles (ranging from Grade 3 (£22k per annum) to Senior Manager/ Executive roles (£100k plus per annum).
• Nursing and Midwifery, Doctors, Teaching roles, Police Officer, etc.

States owned companies are intended to operate with complete or substantial operational
independence of the States of Jersey. As such, company decisions in respect of the termination of the employment of a member of staff would be a matter for the company and not for the States of Jersey.

Exemption

25    Personal information

(1)    Information is absolutely exempt information if it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2005.

(2)    Information is absolutely exempt information if:

(a)     it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is not the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2005; and

(b)     its supply to a member of the public would contravene any of the data protection principles, as defined in that Law.