Purchase card transactions (FOI)

Request

I would like to be provided with the following information:

A

The number of purchase cards currently on issue to States employees and the % of holders versus total number of eligible States employees (for example, those that are entitled to have a card based on seniority).

B

The purchase limit on these cards by States employee grade and if a limit exists how many times these limits have been exceeded since 1 January 2010 per quarter per department.

C

The total amount spent per quarter since 1 January 2010 split by department.

D

The average spend by department by calendar year since 1 January 2010 split by department.

E

The total number of cards on issue at the end of each quarter since 1 January 2010.

F

The number of cards that have been revoked as a result of unauthorised spending.

G

A list of the top 10 amounts spent each year by department since 1 January 2010 and the supplier used in each case.

Response

A

There are 821 cards currently in issue under the current corporate contract. We are unable to provide a percentage of card holders against ‘eligible card holders’ as the need for a corporate card is assessed on the need of the specific role. We do not identify a pool of eligible employees.

B

The purchase card limit on a card is role specific rather than determined by grade. All cards have an overall limit which cannot be exceeded and most cards also have an individual transaction limit. Limits cannot be exceeded.

C

The quartely spend by department is shown in the table below: 

Quarterly spend by department

D

The average transaction spend per department per year is shown in the table below:

Average spend by department

E

We are unable to provide this data as the number of cards at each quarter end going back to 2010 is not maintained. The total number of cards is shown in the response to question A above.

Information previously published in Freedom of Information responses provides the number of cards in issue;

As at July 2017: Purchase card allocation and usage (FOI)

As at 31 October 2015: Number of staff and credit cards in each department (FOI)

F

The reason for cancellation of a purchase card is not held centrally. To investigate records for all departments would take in excess of the 12.5 hours allocated under the Freedom of Information Regulations.

Available departmental records (only covering the last two years of incidents), show that four cards were revoked for non fraudulent anomalies in 2018 and two cards in 2019. All amounts were repaid by the cardholder and the value of each transaction was less than £35. The average amount of the transactions was £16.30.

G

The exact data requested could not be produced in a usable format due to the number of variables in the question. To extract the information for all departments would take in excess of the 12.5 hours allocated under the Freedom of Information Regulations.

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