Cost benefit analysis and economic impact

WQ.379/2023

WRITTEN QUESTION TO THE MINISTER FOR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, TOURISM, SPORT AND CULTURE

BY DEPUTY M.R. SCOTT OF ST. BRELADE

QUESTION SUBMITTED ON MONDAY 9th OCTOBER 2023

ANSWER TO BE TABLED ON MONDAY 16th OCTOBER 2023

Question

“Will the Minister provide the date and details of every cost benefit analysis and economic impact assessment commissioned or conducted over the last ten years, including a copy of each report or assessment, in respect of the following organisations funded by the Department for the Economy –

1. Jersey Business;
2. Visit Jersey;
3. Digital Jersey;
4. Jersey National Park;
5. Jersey Competition Regulatory Authority;
6. CERT.je;
7. Jersey Sport;
8. Jersey Reds; and

in the case of Visit Jersey, provide a table illustrating how the funding of Visit Jersey has increased or decreased over the years since its establishment in comparison to the number of hotel beds in the Island over the same time period?”

Answer

In all instances, payments made by Government will have been accompanied by either a business case (for growth revenue expenditure) or a grant agreement with associated appraisal (in the case of grants made under existing partnership agreements).

Amongst the requirements for a business case or grant agreement are an appraisal of the costs and benefits of the available options and their and anticipated impact along with a review of delivery against stated priorities.

Further grant appraisals are undertaken as a matter of course for ALOs twice per year to evaluate the performance of each ALO against their business plan and KPIs.

A breakdown of payments to the Arm’s Length organisations requested is below, as noted above, each of these payments would have been accompanied by either a business case or grant agreement:

 

	Jersey Business	Visit Jersey	Digital Jersey	Jersey National Park	Jersey Competition Regulatory Authority	Jersey Sport
	£ 000’s	£ 000’s	£ 000’s	£ 000’s	£ 000’s	£ 000’s
2013	615	-	635	-	335	-
2014	625	-	1,329	-	399	-
2015	715	2,585	838	-	354	-
2016	821	5,100	727	-	300	-
2017	739	5,100	1,030	-	809	684

 

2018	734	5,000	1,327	-	209	1,310
2019	738	4,900	1,250	61	503	1,333
2020	860	4,628	1,725	100	340	1,444
2021	860	5,650	2,025	150	691	1,956
2022	860	5,750	2,225	200	897	1,962
2023	1,560	5,682	2,325	250	747	2,143
*additional funding has been provided via Economic Recovery Fund and not included in departmental spend.
All Information provided has been collated by totalling all Grant payments made to the specific supplier's name i.e.. Digital Jersey Ltd.

Similarly, grants made to the Jersey Reds would have in each instance required a business case and a breakdown of these payments can be found here:

It should be noted that, pre-2016 Reds (professional rugby) and JRFC (amateur rugby) were one and the same legal entity and it is difficult to separate payments or differentiate as to whether payments were made to support amateur / community participation or the business of professional rugby.

 

2013	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023
-	-	-	-	-	75,000	125,000	250,000	150,000	50,000	370,000

As the Deputy will be aware, CERT.je is not currently an Arm’s Length Organisation but functions as part of the Government of Jersey. Its budget is therefore within the Department for the Economy.

As set out in my letters to the EIA Panel of 17th March and 6th April 2023 it would not be appropriate to publish Business Cases or grant agreements in a public setting. These internal documents are prepared to inform the decision-making process and therefore necessarily contain commercially sensitive information such as staff salaries and commercial agreements.

The total number of hotel beds for each of the last ten years is as follows, also provided are the total numbers of visitors:

 

Year	Visit Jersey core grant[1]	Hotel beds2	Overnight holiday visits
2012		8881	333,000
2013	-	8893	326,000
2014	-	8576	338,000
2015	2,585	8390	347,000
2016	5,100	7685	363,000
2017	5,100	7589	418,000
2018	5,000	7822	415,000
2019	4,900	7705	439,000
2020	4,628	7626	Data collection disrupted due to COVID
2021	4,900	7398	Data collection disrupted due to COVID

 

 

2022

4,900

6711

Data collection disrupted due to COVID