Commercial Vehicle Operators Licencing Scheme (FOI)

Request

In regard to The Commercial Vehicle Operators Licencing Scheme

Please can I have answers to the following questions!

1

From its commencement how much has the scheme cost up to the 1st of September 2024?

2

Including in question 1 the cost of director and cost of contract or temporary staff including any off Island specialised staff?

3

Has there been any UK / off Island staff been employed permanent or temporarily employed for this new operators’ licencing scheme?

4

How much has the off-Island cost of travel / accommodation and expenses cost for this scheme?

5

Are there any plans that will enable the private sector to provide and manage this licencing scheme?

6

Is there any truth that the DVS / States are seeking a commercial site for a UK based operator to take over and manage this commercial operators’ Licencing scheme i Jersey.

7

Is there now a DVS Manager been appointed to manage this commercial licencing scheme?

8

Up to year end 2023 please can you advise income and expenditure for the commercial operators licencing scheme?

Response

1

It should be noted that the Government of Jersey investigated the feasibility of introducing a Commercial Vehicle Operators Licencing Scheme but the introduction of a full scheme was placed on hold. 

However, the Annual Roadworthiness Inspections (ARI) commenced in June 2018.

As at 1 September 2024 the cost for the feasibility investigations and introduction of ARI was £250,189, however, this does not include the internal Government of Jersey staff costs.

It should be noted that the Government of Jersey systems are not configured in a way to allow Government staff costs to be reported against individual projects.

Therefore, information regarding the staff costs is not held and Article 10 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied.

2

The recruitment cost was £11,382.

3

The Government of Jersey has not employed anyone off island in a temporary or permanent role in relation to the operators licencing scheme, however, £40,236 was spent on technical advice from the Freight Transport Association (FTA) in the UK.

4

£2,100 has been spend on off-island travel expenses in relation to the scheme.

5

There are no plans for the private sector to provide and manage the licencing scheme.

6

A commercial site is not being sought by the Government of Jersey for a UK based operator to take over and manage a commercial operators’ Licencing scheme in Jersey.

7

The Government of Jersey employed someone to manage the feasibility of the scheme within the Driver and Vehicle Standards (DVS) team.  However, the employee was reassigned to other duties when the introduction of this scheme was placed on hold.

8

The legislation regarding the Commercial Operators Licence Scheme has not yet been enacted, therefore, no income attributed to this scheme has been generated to this date.

However, it should be noted that the ARIs have generated some income following their introduction.

However, DVS, does not maintain a separate list of the income and expenditure for the commercial ARIs therefore this information is not held and Article 10 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 applies.

The DVS system is not configured in a way that will allow extraction of details requested.  A manual search of records would be required in order to obtain this information. 

It has been estimated that to provide the information requested would exceed the 12.5 hours allowed for Freedom of Information responses in accordance with Regulation 2 (1) of the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014. Article 16 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has therefore been applied and this part of the request will not be processed further.

Articles applied

Article 10 - Obligation of scheduled public authority to confirm or deny holding Information

(1) Subject to paragraph (2), if –

(a) a person makes a request for information to a scheduled public authority; and

(b) the authority does not hold the information, it must inform the applicant accordingly.

​Article 16 - A scheduled public authority may refuse to supply information if cost excessive

(1) A scheduled public authority that has been requested to supply information may refuse to supply the information if it estimates that the cost of doing so would exceed an amount determined in the manner prescribed by Regulations. 

(2) Despite paragraph (1), a scheduled public authority may still supply the information requested on payment to it of a fee determined by the authority in the manner prescribed by Regulations for the purposes of this Article.

(3) Regulations may provide that, in such circumstances as the Regulations prescribe, if two or more requests for information are made to a scheduled public authority –

(a) by one person; or

(b) by different persons who appear to the scheduled public authority to be acting in concert or in pursuance of a campaign, the estimated cost of complying with any of the requests is to be taken to be the estimated total cost of complying with all of them.