Bus Operator contract 2025

​​Request 792842343

Please share the Contracting Authority’s bus specification that was issued as part of the tender process for the 2025 Bus Operator Contract

Response

The Contracting Authority’s bus specification that was issued as part of the tender process for the 2025 Bus Operator Contract is exempt under Article 33(b) Commercial Interests of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 as details of the bus specifications are considered commercially sensitive.

Article 33 is a qualified exemption; therefore, a public interest test has been applied and is shown at the end of this response.

Article applied

Article 33 - Commercial interests

Information is qualified exempt information if –

(a) it constitutes a trade secret; or

(b) its disclosure would, or would be likely to, prejudice the commercial interests of a person (including the scheduled public authority holding the information).

Public interest test

In applying article 33 (b), the following considerations were considered.

Public interest considerations favouring disclosure

• Disclosure of the information would ensure the general public are informed about the Contracting Authority’s bus specification.

• Disclosure of the information would support transparency and promote accountability to the general public, preventing misuse of public contracts and favouritism.

• Disclosure would also promote trust in the Scheduled Public Authority (SPA) by showing openness

Public interest considerations favouring withholding the information

• The disclosure of the Contracting Authority’s bus specification could potentially disadvantage the contractor’s and the SPA’s ability to retain commercial advantage in any future tender process.

• This could also result in the SPA’s inability to secure best value for the taxpayer, and this will likely prejudice the SPA as its bargaining power decreases.

• Contracting Authority’s bus specification can contain detailed standards, operational performance metrics, operator performance, service quality expectations. Making these public could potentially generate misinterpretation, and cause uninformed criticism, damaging the contractor’s reputation despite meeting all contractual obligations. This may lead to misinformation and mischaracterisation of the contractor’s performance.

• The disclosure of the Contracting Authority’s bus specification may result in misinformed public debate regarding any mutually agreed changes to the original bus specification, and subjecting them to undue, misinformed scrutiny could damage their business reputation, customer trust, and competitive positioning in future tenders. Therefore, this could jeopardise the business relationship between the SPA and the contractor.

• The disclosure of the Contracting Authority’s bus specification can invite undue interference from third parties who may misinterpret timelines or attempt to influence operational decisions, disrupting service delivery by undermining the contractor’s ability to operate efficiently, create expectations beyond what the contract requires and or generate pressure to explain or defend technical design decisions made by the Contracting Authority

Considering all considerations above, while transparency and accountability is important, the public interest in disclosure must be weighed against potential harm caused by prejudice of the commercial interests and the risks of misinformation.

The SPA has concluded that, on balance, the risk of causing harm caused by prejudice of the commercial interests and or concerns or spreading misinformation, the public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighs the benefits disclosing the information