Extra £250k for States as newspaper 'monopoly' ends next week

Wednesday 27 June 2018

A 58-year-old law requiring all official notices to be published in the newspaper at a yearly cost of more than £250,000 to taxpayers will finally end next week.

From next Tuesday, States departments, parishes and private companies will be able to publish notices in the Jersey Gazette on everything from new legislation to public meetings, road closures, dog licences or notice of companies in liquidation without having to pay to put it in the Jersey Evening Post.

Since 1960, it has been a legal requirement to publish a whole range of official notices in “one English language newspaper circulating Jersey”, which had been prescribed as the JEP. 

It meant that States and parish bodies were forced to pay whatever the newspaper set as the going rate for page space. 

But many complained that it meant that the newspaper was being unfairly subsidised and that it reduced media competition in the island. Chief Executive of regulator CICRA, Mike Byrne, lambasted the system for being “unfair” and “not creat[ing] a level playing field.”

States Members voted to overhaul that old law last year, overwhelmingly backing the public money-saving move by 39 votes to just six. Yesterday, they voted to introduce the change next week.

The change complements a States initiative introduced in 2016 to publish those notices online, both on the gov.je website and on Bailiwick Express. For the first time ever, it allowed islanders to access all official notices entirely free.

A request submitted under the Freedom of Information Law revealed that the average annual cost to the States alone (not including the amounts paid by the Parishes or the whole private sector) was £278,065 between 2011 and 2014, with the Environment, Infrastructure and Education departments being the biggest spenders. 

That figure was confirmed in January last year, when the Assistant Minister for Digital, Deputy Scott Wickenden, said that scrapping the legal requirement would save taxpayers £245,000 a year– not including the amount saved by the parishes or private sector companies.  

A report accompanying the proposition for yesterday's vote to bring it into force next week said that the law change "will help ensure that arrangements for publishing official notices are cost-effective and efficient as a way of informing Islanders; and that this should be free of charge to the Public."

Islanders will be able to access all government and parish information freely on the Express website, gov.je, Twitter or receive updates relevant to them via email.