Jersey Employment and Discrimination Tribunal costs (FOI)

Request

A

Please can you provide information about the total cost of having and maintaining the Jersey Employment and Discrimination Tribunal (say to within about £5K). How much do the salaries and other employment costs of those sitting on the tribunal amount to?

B

How much are the administration costs of the tribunal, for example, the cost of any secretary or clerk to the tribunal and the costs of the room that they sit it, cost of providing and maintaining computers, telephones, website and so on.

Response

The three full time staff, the offices, IT infrastructure, meeting rooms and the two hearing rooms at the Tribunal Service’s International House office support all the different Tribunals which are within the remit of the service - Employment and Discrimination, Mental Health Review, Planning, Social Security, Health and Safety and Charity; in addition, the service manages the registration of Trade Unions. The meeting and hearing rooms are also available for use without cross charge by other divisions of the Judicial Greffe or other Departments and may be used for a fee by third parties.

Given the shared nature of the infrastructure outlined above, information is not held separately in records of the specific overhead costs which are incurred by the Jersey Employment and Discrimination Tribunal (JEDT).

While the costs of the panel members of the JEDT are accounted for separately the fact that the JEDT shares its infrastructure with all the other services supported by the Tribunal Service office means that records are not held which show the total cost of having / maintaining the JEDT to within about £5k. Article 3 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 therefore applies.

Article 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.