Multiple failures of your legal requirement to respond to FOI requests.

Response to this request is long overdue. By law, under all circumstances, Reading Transport Limited should have responded by now (details). You can complain by requesting an internal review.

Dear Reading Transport Limited,

I would like to know the reason why Reading Buses continuously fails to respond to FOI requests within the 20 working days period and often doesn't respond to them at all.

For example my request here has still not been responded to:

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/f...

Also if you look on this What Do They Know website you will see lots of other FOI requests made by other people that have still not been responded to:

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/body/read...

You have a legal obligation to respond to all FOI requests within 20 working days. You continuously fail this legal obligation again and again and again.

What is going on? Why are you not responding to FOI requests as required by law?

Yours faithfully,

Simon Andrews

Tony Pettitt, Reading Transport Limited

2 Attachments

Dear Mr Andrews

 

Thank you for your email of 9^th December 2018 and your earlier follow-up
to the original request you made for copies of our faretables.  I
apologise for the length of time it has taken to respond to your request
for information.

 

I acknowledge that it is the case that a number of requests made to us
have been substantially delayed, particularly in recent months.  This was
due to a combination of high workload in Customer Services (which hosts
the email address that is linked to the What Do They Know website), no
obvious mechanism being in place to prioritise FoI requests received on
that shared email address and a period when the senior management team had
to cover other duties while waiting for a new CEO to arrive.

 

I agree that this is not an acceptable position and we have therefore
reviewed our processes.  We will be setting up a separate email for FoI
correspondence and establishing a clear responsibility to manage and chase
any responses that are passed to individuals to deal with in future.  I
believe that this will enable us to meet our obligations.

 

Turning to your specific request for additional information:

 

Faretables for your local routes in Reading (not just the long distance
ones)? I know it is mostly flat fares but i know you do also have some
cheaper short hop fares for shorter journeys so it would be useful to have
faretables to see which fare stages these cheaper fares are sold between.

 

This information is available on the website
[1]https://www.reading-buses.co.uk/cheap-si...

 

Additionally your Kennections / Newbury & District / Thames Valley
faretables are not available anywhere either and these services have much
more complicating fares. Can you please also include the faretables for
these services? These routes have a selection of different Single and
Return fares and other tickets.

 

Thames Valley fares are the same as First on Route 4 and Route 6.  Route
5, where we operate commercially has a flat fare, as set out on the
website [2]https://www.reading-buses.co.uk/thamesva...

 

We have a limited supply of the printed faretables previously issued to
drivers that cover all Reading services and Kennections routes.  I am
aware that currently there is no published version of the faretables for
Newbury & District and this is something we will be addressing as we bring
that operation closer to our own.  Our target for the first stage of
integration is Easter 2019.

 

All fares are of course stored on the ticket machines and can be accessed
for enquiries by the driver. We have not routinely produce printed copies
for some time, as we believe that this electronic version meets the
regulatory requirement.  Exporting the fares configuration from the ETM
software is possible but regrettably is not delivered in a particularly
user-friendly output format. 

 

You will no doubt be aware of the imminent regulations under the Bus
Services Act 2017 that will require operators to provide, amongst other
things, open source fares data.  Reading Buses will adopt new standards in
line with these regulations once they are published.

 

In the meantime I would be happy to provide printed copies of the
available faretables, if you let me know where they should be sent.

 

If you are dissatisfied with this response for any reason you have the
right to seek an internal review.  A request for review should be
submitted to our Customer Services Team within two months from the date of
this response. An internal panel will then review the response and advise
you of the outcome.

 

If having requested a review by Reading Buses you are not satisfied with
the outcome you have the right of appeal to the Information Commissioner’s
Office (Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF).

 

Yours sincerely

 

Tony Pettitt

 

Tony Pettitt​
Chief Finance & Information Officer
[3]0118 9027602 (office)
[4]07775 871719 (mobile)
[5][Reading Transport Limited request email]
Great Knollys Street
​Reading RG1 7HH
[6]www.reading-buses.co.uk
Any views or opinions presented in this email are solely those of  Tony Pettitt  and do not necessarily represent those of Reading Transport Limited (trading as Reading Buses). Please notify  [7][Reading Transport Limited request email]
immediately if you have received this email by mistake and delete it from your system.
 

References

Visible links
1. https://www.reading-buses.co.uk/cheap-si...
2. https://www.reading-buses.co.uk/thamesva...
3. file:///tmp/tel:0118%209027602
4. file:///tmp/tel:07775%20871719
5. mailto:[Reading Transport Limited request email]
6. http://www.reading-buses.co.uk/
7. mailto:[Reading Transport Limited request email]

Dear Tony Pettitt,

Hello. Many thanks for your response and explanation. Much appreciated. I have sent an email to you from my personal email - simonandrewssimonandrews at mail dot com - as i don't want to put my home address on this public website. Many thanks.

Yours sincerely,

Simon Andrews