The Department of Health has been ordered to reconsider its refusal to release health and safety records for the island’s childcare facilities under public access to information.

The department, which rejected a 2016 Pati request from The Royal Gazette on the grounds that disclosing the records would create too much work and could affect the “commercial interests” of the businesses involved, has been told by Information Commissioner Gitanjali Gutierrez to issue a new decision by June 11.

Ms Gutierrez, in her decision on the matter, rejected the department’s claim that processing the Pati request would substantially interfere or disrupt its work.

She said: “Disclosure of the ... records may assist the public with selecting safe, hygienic providers for their children. It will also inform the public of the steps taken by the department to monitor and ensure public health and safety for one of the island’s most vulnerable populations: preschool age infants and children.

“These parents and other caregivers trust that a facility’s licence and inspection by the Department of Health provides meaningful assurance of its safety and qualifications.”

The Royal Gazette submitted a Pati request to the department in February 2016, asking for the date on which every childcare establishment was last visited by environmental health inspectors and the report from that visit, as well as a list of complaints received about childcare providers for the previous five years and records on the safety of play equipment.

The department refused the request, prompting us to narrow it to the previous 12 months. The narrowed request was also refused, as was an additional request for details of any accidents that had been reported at childcare provider premises in the last year.

Health permanent secretary Jennifer Attride-Stirling upheld the refusal after an internal review. She insisted that the Department of Health lacked the staffing resources to process the request, as inspection, investigation and safety records were maintained in individual files for each childcare provider and there was no central database where the information was stored.

We appealed her decision to Ms Gutierrez, whose investigation revealed there were 126 files to retrieve, relating to 55 registered nurseries, daycare centres and preschools and 71 registered homecare facilities. They care for about 2,500 children during the working week.

The commissioner accepted the department’s estimate that it would take more than 16 hours to retrieve the files and process them for disclosure, but said this did not amount to “substantial interference”.

A Ministry of Health spokesman said yesterday: “The ministry’s position has been stated before and is not changed by the ICO’s decision.”

Health minister Kim Wilson said in March that the Ministry of Health has been swamped with Pati requests.

She told Parliament the volume of inquiries had used up “a tremendous amount of staff time”. She said: “The impact of Pati has been significant and highly detrimental.”