In early 2024, Mott Mcdonald provided to Cornwall Council a review of the Truro park and ride service. After the portfolio holder for Transport, Richard Williams-Pears, failed to answer my email requesting a copy of the report, I made an FOI request in April and, in May, received a redacted copy of the report, see park and ride review.
I asked the Council for an internal review of the decision to redact certain information in the report including the actual patronage figures for the service. The response that I received conceded that the redaction of a couple of headings in the index to the report should not have been made but continued to maintain that the patronage figures were correctly redacted. See internal review response.
The reason given for redacting the patronage figures is as follows:
"The figures of patronage are broken down to exact figures for each month and year. Disclosure under the FOIA 2000 is disclosure to the world at large, without restriction. Using information already accessible in the public domain (for example the price of tickets), it would be possible from the patronage figures to calculate an exact monthly and yearly figure of revenue. All of the above can be considered confidential market intelligence. Disclosure of this confidential market intelligence would cause detriment to the current provider and the soft market test providers.”
This really is complete nonsense. The current contract for providing the park and ride service is, as described in the Mott Mcdonald report, "The current contract model is a gross cost contract, with the operator paid a fixed daily rate for the provision of the services specified in the contract. All income from ticket sales is paid to the Council.”
Therefore, providing the actual patronage figures does not give anyone any information about the financial affairs of the current provider - they receive the same sum from Cornwall Council each month whatever the passenger numbers are.
The writer of the internal review either does not understand the way that the park and ride contract works or, he does understand, but has wilfully chosen to withhold the information on deliberately spurious grounds. Unfortunately, this seems to be the current modus operandi for Cornwall Council on most FOI requests - refuse to provide information because it might be a bit embarrassing for the Council and just stonewall for as long as possible, preferably until the person asking for the information gives up in frustration.
A couple of other trivial examples of spurious redactions in this FOI response:
On page 46 of the Mott Mcdonald report, it refers to the potential hiring out of the meeting room at Tregurra and redacts the price of hiring a comparable room at Truro library. If someone phoned up Truro library and asked how much it would cost to hire a room, would the library say, “Sorry, I can’t tell you that, it is commercially confidential.”? Furthermore, just to compound the ludicrousness, the next line in the report provides a URL to the website where the information is published! See Truro library meeting rooms.
On page 29, when referring to comparable park and ride sites such as the Elland Road, Leeds site, it redacts the figures for business rates paid at this site. Valuation of all properties for business rates are in the public domain on the government website and the rates payable are simply calculated by multiplying the valuation by the uniform business rates multiplier. Therefore, why was the figure redacted? Probably simple incompetence.
I will be pursuing with the ICO a complaint against Cornwall Council for their incorrect redactions, but that process will almost certainly take months.