People receiving Income Support as of December 2024 (FOI)

Request 700327780

1. How many people were in receipt of income support at the end of December 2024.

2. Of that number how many people were unemployed.

3. How many of the unemployment people receiving income support at the end of 2024 had been unemployed for less than 3 months, 3-6 months, 6-12 months, 1-2 years, 2-5 years, over 5 years.

Clarification requested

Question 1. -  Please clarify if the request is asking ‘How many people (individuals)’ the request relates to OR ‘How many households’ were in receipt of income support at the end of December 2024

Clarification received

CLS Annual Report 2023 provides some information about income support. It states payments of 73.8 million were paid to a ‘Quantity’ of 5235.

It does not say if this quantity are people or households. I assumed it was people, but in the report it is not clear.

Please could you answer my question for both people and households and confirm if the 2023 figure refers to people or households.

Response

1. On the 31/12/2023 there were 5,235 income support household claims. The £73.8 million accounts for total weekly benefit paid out across the entire year of 2023. 

The 5,235 household claims were made up of 6,320 adults and 2,417 children. 

2. We are applying Article 36 exemption as the Information is intended for future publication.

The reason for not publishing the data as part of this FOI is that the data requires validation before publication. Early release of the data may mean that inaccurate data will be present in the public domain which would not be of benefit to the public.

This information will be published online in the States of Jersey Annual Report and Accounts, by the 2nd week of June 2025. Therefore Article 36 Exemption of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied.

3. The unemployment measures that ESSH use to measure and report on unemployment is ‘Actively Seeking Work’ (ASW). More information about this measure can be found here:  Unemployment statistics.  

The number of people registered as ASW with Employment, Social Security and Housing (ESSH) on 31st December 2024, who were in receipt of Income Support, is 688. This figure includes some individuals who are considered ‘under-employed’.  This means they are working part time but seeking additional hours of work.

4. The data we hold is shown in the table below:

Article applied

​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.

Public Interest Test

Article 36 is a qualified exemption, which means that a public interest test must 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 favoring disclosure:

In favour of early release:

• Applicant would receive the information they seek which could be close to being accurate

In favour of withholding until publication date:

• Data requires validation, it may not be 100% accurate at the current time
• There could be 2 versions of the same data in the public domain which is unhelpful to the public and does not reflect well on Employment, Social Security and Housing.
• The expected publication date is well within the 12 weeks allowed by the exemption ​