
Freedom of
Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014
1 Interpretation
In these Regulations –
“Law” means the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011;
“specified amount” means –
(a) in
respect of a request to a scheduled public authority specified in any of
paragraphs 1 to 7 of Schedule 1 to the Law, £500; or
(b) in
respect of a request to a parish on or after 1st September 2015,
£200.
2 Estimating
the cost of supplying information
(1) For the purposes of Article 16(1)
of the Law, if the estimated cost of supplying information would exceed the
specified amount, as determined in accordance with this Regulation and, if
applicable Regulation 3, a scheduled public authority may refuse to supply
that information.
(2) In making such a
determination, the scheduled public authority shall take into account only the
costs attributable to the time which it reasonably expects to be spent by a
person undertaking any of the activities described in paragraph (3) on the
scheduled public authority’s behalf.
(3) Those activities
are –
(a) determining
whether the scheduled public authority holds the information;
(b) locating
the information, or a document which may contain the information;
(c) retrieving
the information, or a document which may contain the information; and
(d) extracting
the information from a document containing it.
(4) The costs referred to
in paragraph (2) are to be estimated at a rate of £40 per person per
hour.
3 Estimating
the cost of complying with a request – aggregation of related
requests
(1) In the circumstances
specified in paragraph (2), where 2 or more requests for information are
made to a scheduled public authority by –
(a) one
person; or
(b) different
persons who appear to the scheduled public authority to be acting in concert or
in pursuance of a campaign,
the estimated cost of complying with any of the requests as
determined in accordance with Regulation 2 is to be taken to be the
estimated total cost of complying with all of them.
(2) Those circumstances are
that –
(a) the 2
or more requests referred to in paragraph (1) relate, to any extent, to
the same or similar information; and
(b) those
requests are received by the scheduled public authority within any period of
60 consecutive working days or such longer period as is reasonable in all
the circumstances of the case.
(3) In this Regulation
“working day” means a day other than –
(a) a
Saturday, a Sunday, Christmas Day, or Good Friday; or
(b) a day
that is a bank holiday or a public holiday under the Public Holidays and Bank Holidays (Jersey)
Law 1951.
4 Supply
of information where estimated costs exceed the specified amount
(1) If a scheduled public
authority estimates that the cost of supplying information will exceed the
specified amount as determined in accordance with Regulation 2 and, if
applicable, Regulation 3, the scheduled public authority may, in
accordance with Article 16(2) of the Law, supply the information requested
on payment to it of a fee determined in the manner set out in this Regulation.
(2) That fee shall be of
such amount as the scheduled public authority may determine is appropriate in
all the circumstances of the case, such amount not exceeding the total
of –
(a) the
costs which the scheduled public authority may take into account in accordance
with Regulation 2 (disregarding any costs it may take into account solely
by virtue of Regulation 3), in relation to that request; and
(b) the
costs the scheduled public authority reasonably expects to incur
in –
(i) informing the
person making the request whether it holds the information, and
(ii) communicating
the information to the person making the request.
(3) Costs which may be
taken into account by a public authority for the purposes of paragraph (2)(b)
include, but are not limited to, the costs of –
(a) reproducing
any document containing the information; and
(b) postage
and other forms of transmitting the information.
(4) For the purposes of
paragraph (2)(b), to the extent that such costs are attributable to a
person undertaking activities on the scheduled authority’s behalf, those
costs are to be estimated at a rate of £40 per person per hour.
5 Citation
These Regulations may be cited as the Freedom of Information (Costs)
(Jersey) Regulations 2014.