New States website crashes

Wednesday 08 January 2014

A new ‘streamlined’ States website that promised to save paperwork and hassle by linking up manpower and tax reports has crashed within days of going live.

Businesses had been trying to use the page on the States’ www.gov.je website to file their mandatory returns to States departments, but the flood of requests to the site overloaded it. It has now been brought back online.

The website crashed yesterday afternoon.

The States had been promoting the site as part of a streamlined process which would do away with old paperwork and emails and set up a simpler process, and had promised to make the transition ‘as smooth as possible’.

All businesses in Jersey have to file a Manpower Return every six months, and up until this year, that has simply recorded the number of full and part-time employees and whether they were locally qualified or not.

The new return will include residential status, and potentially tax details, and is part of a set of tighter controls that the States have brought in to make sure that jobs are being filled only by people with the right residential qualifications.

The normal deadline for filing the returns is 31 January.