Chamber of Commerce lunch - discussion on child welfare (FOI)

​Request

At today's Chamber of Commerce Lunch (21 February 2018) the Chief Executive, Charles Parker, was reported in a Bailiwick Express article to make the following statement: “Mr Parker spoke of kids arriving at school with evidence of being bitten by rats at home”

Quoted from: https://www.bailiwickexpress.com/jsy/news/300-school-children-not-given-breakfast-or-uniform-jersey/#.WroMydKWzcs

My question under the Freedom of Information Law is:

In past 12 months how many cases of children arriving at school with rat bites have been reported to either Education, Children's Services, Accident and Emergency, the Medical Officer of Health or the Environmental Health Department?

Response

Any instances of children in the last 12 months arriving at schools with rat bites have either not been formally recorded by these Departments, or in the case of Health and Social Services, for them to fully answer this question, each record in Children’s Services would need to be accessed. Therefore, Article 16 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied on the grounds of excessive costs.

Please note that for the purpose of this request, ‘in the past 12 months’ was defined as between 21 February 2017 and 21 February 2018, the latter date being the date the request for information was received.

Article applied

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.