St John's Road Road Safety Improvement Board (1) (FOI)

Request

Please provide copies of all the agendas, Minutes, correspondence (both issued and received), and consultants' reports, commissioned by the St John’s Road, Road Safety Improvement Board.

Response

The information requested is partially exempt under Article 23 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011, and some is accessible on www.gov.je within the previous FOI responses linked below.

Parade Road correspondence (2) (FOI)

St John’s Road trial scheme correspondence (FOI)

St John’s Road Road Safety Board (FOI)

Attached are copies of the agendas relating to three of the meetings detailed in the above linked previous Freedom of Information responses. 

Agenda - 11 March 2021_Redacted.pdf

Agenda - 17 March 2021_Redacted.pdf

Agenda - 3 October 2022_Redacted.pdf

Limited personal data has been redacted under Article 25 (Personal Information) of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011.

Please note the agenda dated 3 October 2022 relates to the meeting held on 16 November 2023 as this meeting was originally postponed.

Please note that the agenda relating to the meeting held on 15 April 2021 is not held, therefore Article 3 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 applies.

The additional information requested is exempt under Article 35 (Formulation and development of policies) of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 as this project currently remains policy under development.

Article 35 is a qualified exemption; therefore, a public interest test has been applied and is shown at the end of this response.

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 23 - Information accessible to applicant by other means

(1) Information is absolutely exempt information if it is reasonably available to the applicant, otherwise than under this Law, whether or not free of charge.

(2) A scheduled public authority that refuses an application for information on this ground must make reasonable efforts to inform the applicant where the applicant may obtain the information.

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 2018.

(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.

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.

Public Interest Test

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 policy 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 and provide advice to Ministers, 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 development as iterations of documents are demonstrative of the policy development process. 
• The need for this safe space is considered at its greatest during the live stages of a policy. 
• Release of the information at this stage might generate misinformed debate in. This would affect the ability of officials to consider and develop policy away from external pressures, and to advise Ministers appropriately. 
• Premature disclosure of this information may limit the willingness of parties to provide their honest views and feedback. This would hamper and harm the policy–making process not only in relation to this subject area but in respect of future policy development across wider departmental business.

Following assessment, the Government of Jersey has concluded that, on balance, the public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosing the information. 

It should also be noted that once a policy is formulated and published, the public interest in withholding information relating to its formulation is diminished, however, the use of the exemption can be supported if it preserves sufficient freedom during the policy formulation phase to explore options without that process being hampered by some expectation of future publication.