Our Hospital functional brief (FOI)

Request

Please provide a copy of the draft functional brief for the new hospital project, in the form that the document exists on the date of this request made on 13 October 2020.

Response

The Our Hospital Draft Functional Brief constitutes policy under development and is due to be published on www.gov.je within 12 weeks of the date of this request. Therefore, Article 35 (Formulation and development of policies) and Article 36 (Information intended for future publication) of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 have been applied.

Articles applied

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.

Article 35 is a qualified exemption, which means that a public interest test has to be undertaken to examine the circumstances of the case and decide whether, on balance, the public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosing the information.

Although there is a need for transparency and accountability by public authorities this information relates to an ongoing situation. The SPA, and indeed good government, requires full input from the subject matter experts, in this case clinicians and health care staff, to enable officers to develop policy with a view to the possible impact of the proposed policy prior to presenting to Ministers and officials to discuss and test it in a comprehensive way to facilitate good decision-making.

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

Public interest considerations favouring withholding the information

• the functional brief is a work in progress and has not been taken through the appropriate approvals process for this project.

• the draft functional brief is a work that requires detailed input from clinicians and other health and care staff prior to endorsement by the Clinical and Operational Client Group and approval by the Our Hospital Political Oversight Group. This is a clinically-led project and this important engagement with health and care professional is not yet complete. Disclosure at a time when these views are still being formulated, collated and considered could negatively impact the Department’s ability to fully consider all the information and finalise the document for approval.

Article 36 Information intended for future publication

(1) Information is qualified exempt information if, at the time when the request for the information is made, the information is being held by a public authority with a view to its being published within 12 weeks of the date of the request.

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

(a) of the date when the information will be published;

(b) of the manner in which it will be published; and

(c) by whom it will be published.

(3) In this Article, “published” means published –

(a) by a public authority; or

(b) by any other person.

Article 36 is a qualified exemption, which means that a public interest test has to be undertaken to examine the circumstances of the case and decide whether, on balance, the public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosing the information.

Public interest considerations favouring disclosure

* disclosure of the information would support transparency and promote accountability to the general public

Public interest considerations favouring withholding the information

• the functional brief forms the basis of the Employers’ Requirements for the design of Our Hospital and the critical input for this comes from the client in terms of the clinicians and health care staff who will ultimately work in the building and they have been and continue to be involved in the development of the document.

• the final document is due to be published immediately after approval in late November/early December, which is within 12 weeks of the receipt of this request. Publishing the draft document in such close proximity to the final version would potentially lead to confusion.