PayByPhone app time allowance (FOI)

Request

The paybyphone app states "You have a five minute time allowance to park before you start being charged". Under Freedom of Information I would like to know the following:

A

The number of vehicle owners who have received a penalty notice from the introduction of the paybyphone app?

B

I would also appreciate details of any investigation into the time required to gain access to floor 14, safely park and complete the paybyphone requirements in order that the five minute allowance may be considered for re-evaluation.

Response

A and B

It has been identified that incorrect wording was used on both the PayByPhone App and on the Government’s website www.gov.je, which both indicate, as you state, that there is a five minute parking allowance before the charge for the parking session is commenced. This is incorrect since the charging starts once you have parked. Therefore, the App session should be started as soon as practically possible after parking. We have now updated the wording accordingly.

Consequently, there have been no investigations carried out regarding the time required to gain access to any floor of a car park where the App has been used by customers.

The Car Park team cross check whether full parking payments have been made using the PayByPhone app for any vehicles highlighted by the Sand Street payment terminal as having left the car park without a corresponding payment.

We are unable to provide information relating to Excess Charge Notices (‘ECN’) issued solely for offences committed by customers when using the PayByPhone app. This is because our systems do not allow us to determine which ECN’s are issued to customers using the App and because of the number of different offences for which an ECN may be issued.

We would need to carry out a manual search of our records to try to provide you with this information, which we estimate would take in excess of the 12.5 hours allowed for us to respond to Freedom of Information requests.

Article applied

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.

Regulation 2 (1) of the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014 allows an authority to refuse a request for information where the estimated cost of dealing with the request would exceed the specified amount of the cost limit of £500. This is the estimated cost of one person spending 12.5 working hours in determining whether the department holds the information, locating, retrieving and extracting the information.