States of Jersey flexitime written off (FOI)

Request

Many States departments permit staff to work their contracted hours on a flexible time basis, the so called flexitime system. These systems permit a certain amount of additional time worked in each month to be carried forward to the following month, usually up to 2 days. The remainder of any time worked is written off with no option for payment by the employer.

Could you please provide details of how much time was written off, broken down for each quarter and by those departments which permit flexitime, for the calendar year of 2017 and if possible for the 1st and 2nd quarter of 2018.

Could you also provide the cost of the time written off in these circumstances to be provided, either by department or in total if that is not possible?

Response

Please see below link to information relating to departments that have a formal flexitime recording system. The total hours written off for this period are 29,541.31.

Departmental Flexitime write-off

Please note the following points:

A
Where departments do not use either of the two main flexitime recording systems (Bodet and Crown) it has been estimated that to provide this information would exceed the time limits prescribed within the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014.  Article 16 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has therefore been applied.

B
It has been estimated that to split the information down to individual department level would exceed the time limits prescribed and therefore only a total has been provided for in this case.

C
Departments do not routinely collect costs relating to time that is written off, therefore it is not possible to provide the information within the time limits prescribed within the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014.  Article 16 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has therefore been applied.

In order to routinely collect costs, everybody’s hourly rate would have to be held in the ‘flexi-time system’; and it be ensured this this is updated every time there is a change in an employee or a change in working patterns. This would be a manual process and likely add significant administration time especially when there are pay awards, increments etc. There would also be security implications, as currently, the ‘flexi-time system’ simply holds people’s working patterns and hours; if rates of pay was to be included consideration would need to be given to who should have access to this. Therefore, the benefit from holding the information would be less than the cost of keeping it up to date.

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.