Number of legal aid applications received in each year from 2019 to 2024

​​​Request 736721627

Dear FOI Officer

I am making a Freedom of Information request under the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011.

Please provide the following data:

1. The total number of legal aid applications received in each year from 2019 to 2024 (inclusive).

2. The number of those applications that were:

   a. Approved

   b. Rejected

   c. Appealed

   d. Granted upon appeal

3. The number of cases where legal aid was granted by the Judicial Greffier directly under Article 4(4) of the Access to Justice (Jersey) Law 2019 (“exceptional circumstances”).

4. A breakdown of approvals/refusals by case type (e.g. family law, civil, criminal).

Please confirm receipt of this request and let me know if you require any clarification.

Kind regards

​Response

The total number of legal aid applications in each year can only be suppled from 1 April 2022* onwards as legal aid funding has only existed in its current form since then.

Questions 1, 2a and 2b

Questions 2c and 2d

Question 3

We do not hold the requested statistics. The documents holding the records of when the Judicial Greffier has provided legal aid where the interests of justice required it outside of the Legal Aid Guidelines are court information and are absolutely exempt from disclosure under Article 24 of the Freedom of Information (Je​rsey) Law 2011​.

Question 4 

​Article applied

Article 24 - Court information

(1) Information is absolutely exempt information if it is held by a scheduled public authority only by virtue of being contained in a document –

(a) filed with, or otherwise placed in the custody of, a court; or

(b) served upon, or by, the scheduled public authority, in proceedings in a particular cause or matter.

(2) Information is absolutely exempt information if it is held by a scheduled public authority only by virtue of being contained in a document created by –

(a) a court; or

(b) a member of the administrative staff of a court, in proceedings in a particular cause or matter.

(3) Information is absolutely exempt information if it is held by a scheduled public authority only by virtue of being contained in a document –

(a) placed in the custody of; or

(b) created by, a person conducting an inquiry or arbitration, for the purposes of the inquiry or arbitration.

(4) In this Article –

“arbitration” means arbitration to which Part 2 of the Arbitration (Jersey) Law 1998 applies;

“court” includes any tribunal in which legal proceedings may be brought;

“inquiry” means an inquiry or a hearing held under an enactment;

“proceedings in a particular cause or matter” includes an inquest or post-mortem examination.​​​

Internal Review Request

I am writing to request an internal review of FOI Response 736721627 under the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011.

In particular, I challenge the refusal to provide data on the number of cases where legal aid was granted directly by the Judicial Greffier under Article 4(4) of the Access to Justice (Jersey) Law 2019 (“exceptional circumstances”).

Your response cited Article 24 (Court Information) as an absolute exemption. However, I note that I did not request case files or documents, but only anonymised statistical totals. Such totals are administrative data about the operation of the Legal Aid system. They do not disclose the details of any individual proceedings and can be provided without reference to any particular case.

For these reasons, I respectfully ask you to reconsider whether Article 24 applies to aggregated statistical data. If you maintain the exemption, I request a clear explanation of why anonymised totals fall within its scope.

Internal Review Response

This internal review has been conducted by an official of appropriate seniority who has not been involved in the original decision. As part of their review, they will be expected to understand the reasons behind the original response, impartially determine whether the response should be revised, and how so, considering the request and the information held, any relevant exemptions, or other relevant matters under the Law.

The Internal Review Panel was asked to review the original response and confirm the following: Does the FOI request relate to a body to which the Law applies, or information held by a body covered by the Law?

If the answer is no, all the other questions are not applicable. Further questions if above is a yes:

i.

Was the right information searched for and reviewed?

ii.

Was the information supplied appropriately?

iii.

Was information appropriately withheld in accordance with the articles applied and were the public interest test/ prejudice test properly applied?

Following discussion, it was agreed by the Panel that the decision was upheld​.