Expenditure on biscuits (FOI)

Request

How much was spent by the States of Jersey Education Department, including Justin Donovan's department, on biscuits in the last 12 months?

Response

A high level analysis shows that the central States of Jersey Education Department has spent £1,654.91 on biscuits in 2015.

Biscuits are distributed only for training, conferences, appeal boards, evaluation panels and other events within the Education Department and are used most regularly when hosting external agencies or people. 

They are not distributed for the general use of Education Officers.

However, we are unable to provide a more detailed analysis for spend across all Education Department sections and schools within the prescribed time limit.

The Education Department has determined that this information is exempt under Article 16 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011, as it is estimated that it will take in excess of 12.5 hours to collect the information from all Education Department sections and schools.

The key reasons are:

• they are not charged to a specific object code
• there is no single supplier
• biscuits can be purchased directly by every school and section
• to isolate the cost of biscuits, it would require getting copies of thousands of invoices and purchase card receipts, pulling out the relevant information and recording that information

Exemptions:

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 any fee of an amount determined in the manner prescribed by Regulations for the purposes of Article 15.