Request for Liberty Bus operating contract and related data (FOI)

​​Request

A.

Is the operating contract with Liberty Bus publicly available?

B.

What are the regulated criteria, and how is performance/compliance assessed?

C.

Why is the operator a registered charity?

D.

Why is raw bus data (timetables, GPS data etc.) known to be held by the operator, only shared with selected partners/developers, when one would naturally assume it to be of interest to be in the public domain?

E.

Are any controls enforced to prevent this kind of 'behind-closed-doors' deals?

Response

A.

The Department does hold this information but it is not publicly available. This information is exempt under Article 33 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 and cannot be released. See the exemption section below.

B.

These represent a component of the operating contract therefore see answer to 1 above. However, monthly reports to TTS include performance indicators with a number of measures covered including vehicle availability, service punctuality and cleanliness.

C.

This is a question for the operator to answer, related to corporate ethos. See HCT Group's (the parent company of Liberty Bus) website below.

HCT Group website

D.

This is a question for the operator, to whom the data belongs.

E.

All States Contracts are subject to the States of Jersey Financial Codes, Competition and Data Protection laws. A system of internal and external audit is in place to demonstrate compliance, as well as political oversight groups such as the Public Accounts Committee

Exemption

Article 33 - Commercial interests

Information is qualified exempt information if:

(a) It constitutes a trade secret; or
(b) Its disclosure would, or would be likely to, prejudice the commercial interests of a person (including the scheduled public authority holding the information)

The contract is a commercially confidential agreement between the parties and therefore subject to Article 33. Having considered the public interest, the States decision is to withhold the information.