The consultation initially ran from Monday 14th October to 9th December 2019. It was launched at the same time as the SoJP awareness campaign addressing hate crime in Jersey. It was hoped that the issue would be highlighted in the minds of the public and interesting enough to make comment upon.

At the end of November, only two submissions had been received. This raised concerns that the views of the public might not be fully represented, and the Minister approved an extension of the consultation to 10th January and an additional effort was made on social and other media to promote the consultation and seek submissions.

In fact, the last week of the planned consultation saw six additional responses received, and only four arrived during the extension (two of which were sent late in error).

The consultation paper contained 17 questions, with an option for binary yes/no answers and an opportunity to make a narrative response. Comments could be submitted by means of a dedicated email address or by post. There was no accompanying survey as it was anticipated that the narrative comments would be more informative than a quantitative count of yes/no answers. 

The consultation was not issued in translated version, despite arguably being of special interest to members of the public not fluent in English. This was considered, but there were concerns about delay and cost and it would not have been realistically possible to precisely translate the Law in any case.