Independent Jersey Care Inquiry legal costs (FOI)

​Request

A

Please kindly provide the total amount of legal costs paid by the States of Jersey in relation to the Care Inquiry to the present date.

B

Please kindly break these down as fully as possible (for example: document drafting / legal protection for witnesses or alleged victims / travel and accommodation costs / stationary costs / facility hire, and any other categories you deem suitable).

Response

A

This information has been provided recently in response to another Freedom of Information request and is therefore considered accessible by other means, as defined within Article 23 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 (the Law).

The response to the previous request can be found at the following link:

Care enquiry costs (FOI)

B

To provide the level of detail requested would require examination of many individual legal bills and cannot be done within the 12.5 hour time frame allowed under the Law.

Exemptions applied

Article 23 Information accessible to applicant by other means

(1) Information is absolutely exempt information if it is reasonably available to the applicant, otherwise than under this Law, whether or not free of charge.

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

Article 16 A scheduled public authority may refuse to supply information if cost excessive

(1) A scheduled public authority that has been requested to supply information may refuse to supply the information if it estimates that the cost of doing so would exceed an amount determined in the manner prescribed by Regulations.

Regulation 2 (1) of the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014 allows an authority to refuse a request for information where the estimated cost of dealing with the request would exceed the specified amount of the cost limit of £500. This is the estimated cost of one person spending 12.5 working hours in determining whether the department holds the information, locating, retrieving and extracting the information.