Correspondence regarding Le Port Car Park (FOI)

Request

Please provide all email, meetings, meeting minutes, letters, phone calls and any other information with regards to P.33/2019 Le Port Car Park, St Peter / Camping from Kevin Lewis and his department.

Response

A search has been conducted of the email back up system (Cryoserver) which holds copies of all emails sent and received by Government of Jersey (GOJ) staff.

In order to respond to your request within the 12.5 hours allowed under the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011, relevant accounts have been searched using the search criteria ‘P.33/2019’ Le Port Proposition’ and ‘P.33 Proposition’.

The search was carried out on the 23 September 2021 but Cryoserver can only go back 2 years, therefore the email accounts for GOJ staff involved with the Le Port Proposition from March 2019 were also checked.

Copies of the relevant emails have been made available for you to view through a secure document sharing platform.

Personal information has been redacted in accordance with Article 25 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011.

Five documents have been withheld in accordance with Article 35 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011, as they relate to the formulation and development of policy.

Articles applied

Article 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 2018; and

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

(3) In determining for the purposes of this Article whether the lawfulness principle in Article 8(1)(a) of the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018 would be contravened by the disclosure of information, paragraph 5(1) of Schedule 2 to that Law (legitimate interests) is to be read as if sub-paragraph (b) (which disapplies the provision where the controller is a public authority) were omitted.

Article 35 - Formulation and development of policies

Information is qualified exempt information if it relates to the formulation or development of any proposed policy by a public authority.

The Scheduled Public Authority (SPA) is withholding the release of certain parts of the information as it relates to the formulation and development of policy and procedure by the public authority.

The following considerations were taken into account:

Public interest considerations favouring disclosure

• disclosure of the information would support transparency and promote accountability to the general public, providing confirmation that the necessary discussions have taken place

• disclosure to the public fulfils an educative role about the early stages in procedural development and illustrates how the department engages with parties for this purpose 

Public interest considerations favouring withholding the information

• in order to best develop policy, officials need a safe space in which free and frank discussion can take place – discussion of how documentation is presented and provided is considered as integral to policy and procedural development as iterations of documents are demonstrative of the development process

• the need for this safe space is considered at its greatest during the live stages of a project

• release of the information at this stage might generate misinformed debate. This would affect the ability of officials to consider and develop policy away from external pressures, and to advise Ministers appropriately

• disclosure of this information may limit the willingness of parties to provide their honest views and feedback. This would hamper and harm the policy and procedure making process not only in relation to this subject area but in respect of future project development across wider Departmental business.

Taking into account these various factors, the decision has been made to maintain this exemption.