Cost of Fire Safety Officers in schools

​​Request 755394646 

Please kindly provide: 

1. The total spend on fire safety officers in schools over the past five years, broken by year and by school, 

2. Of the total spent during this period, please break down by service provider (e.g. G4S). 

Enter here any further information to support your request: This has been directed at CYPES for now, but query may also pertain to JPH or whichever department is responsible for building maintenance/fire safety. Please kindly clarify in response which department is responsible for this budget if not CYPES. 

Clarification request  

Please clarify if you require information regarding school staff acting as fire safety officers or external providers of this service.

Clarification 

I am looking for external providers.   

Individuals who have been specifically recruited to perform this role, rather than teachers/existing school staff who may have 'fire safety' responsibilities alongside their main role. 

Response 

1. The total spend on Fire Safety Officers over the past three years is provided in the table below. There was no spend for this specific service prior to 2023. We are unable to break this down further into individual Government of Jersey Schools as this is not held in an extractable format. Therefore, Article 3 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 is applied.  

​2. To breakdown the total expenditure into service providers would disclose commercially sensitive information. Therefore Article 33 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law is applied. 

Articles 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.  

Article 33 - Commercial interests  

Information is qualified exempt information if –   

(a) it constitutes a trade secret; or 

(b) its disclosure would, or would be likely to, prejudice the commercial interests of a person (including the scheduled public authority holding the information).  

Public Interest Test 

Article 33 is a qualified exemption and as such, CYPES has conducted a prejudice test as required by law.     

When responding to requests of this nature, CYPES are required to balance the public interest with the impact that disclosing this information would, or would be likely to, have upon the commercial interest of the service provider and to CYPES. Whilst it may be in the public interest to understand the cost paid by CYPES to each provider, protecting the commercial interests of CYPES and to those with whom we have a contract is essential.   

The use of third parties, to provide this service was via contracts. Disclosing information that has been provided under contract will mean that CYPES are in breach of their contract with that service provider and this would prejudice the commercial interests of CYPES.    

When considering the application of this exemption, CYPES has determined that whilst it is in the public interest to disclose the requested costs paid to each provider, this is outweighed by the necessity to limit any impact on its commercial interests in ensuring contractual obligations are met, Article 33 has been applied.    ​