A red-faced States Greffe had to apologise last month after the first constituency newsletter for St John, St Lawrence and Trinity included a map which mixed up two of the parishes.
St Lawrence was listed as Trinity, and Trinity as St Lawrence. One of the electoral district’s Deputies’ names was also misspelt.
Following a request made under the Freedom of Information Law, it has now been revealed that – in addition to review and approval by the Greffe – material was also provided prior to publication to those elected Members who were mentioned in the newsletter.
It seems that all missed the topographical mix-up and the spelling of Deputy Hilary Jeune as “Hilary Juene”.
One of the affected Deputies admitted to not fully reviewing the newsletter.
Deputy Jeune said: “I looked over my actual text, as that was my contribution I had provided to make sure any editing still made sense.
“I must admit, I didn’t think that my name or a map in the general section would be something I needed to pay much attention to when I have a very busy agenda and there are, I assumed, several staff members of the Greffe looking over this.”
She added: “The newsletter included a list of upcoming debates and what’s on, so a lot of extra detail I didn’t think was for me to check if correct. I know that there is supposed to be quality-control checks in the Greffe in general in any documents coming out of the Greffe, and I was told up-front this would happen ahead of publishing. I trusted that process.
“I would also say that I am skeptical of the need for the constituency newsletter, as I regularly contribute to the parish magazines which I think is a more effective way of updating parishioners on what I am doing.
“However, I recognise there are some parish magazines that don’t allow Deputies to submit articles, so maybe there is space there to discuss how that could change.”
Immediately after the district newsletter was distributed, the States Greffe apologised for the error, which was attributed to “a simple human mistake”.