SPSO Individual Decisions

Mrs C lives in an area served by a passenger ferry service. Mrs C and a number of other users were concerned about the re-tendering exercise for this service. This was carried out by Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT) who were responsible for subsidising the service. Mrs C complained that SPT failed to provide adequate specification in the tender documents that the vessel to be deployed should be of modern public transport quality, and awarded the contract to the successful bidder primarily with regard to savings in costs and not on passenger safety and comfort. She also said that SPT had not fully responded to questions that she and others raised. We did not uphold Mrs C's complaints. Our investigation found that the tender documents had specified a size and class of vessel, and required that the vessel deployed should be licensed by the Marine and Coastguard Agency (MCA) for safety and seaworthiness purposes. The successful bidder was not required to supply a new or modern vessel. The incumbent operators, who had been using a vessel built in 2007, were unsuccessful in their bid by a substantial margin. We also noted that the award of the contract had been examined separately by Audit Scotland, who had made no criticism of SPT's procurement process. In response to considerable public interest in the tendering process, SPT had published a question and answer sheet, and had updated this when further questions arose. On balance, we did not uphold this complaint as we found that only two of the six specific questions raised by Mrs C in her correspondence had not received an answer. This was because one was treated as a comment because of the way Mrs C had written it, and the other was a matter for the MCA rather than SPT. Related reading View Decision Report 201202237 as a PDF (11.54 KB) Updated: March 13, 2018

Mr C complained about the way in which Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT) handled the tendering arrangements for a passenger ferry service. Mr C complained that SPT failed to consult appropriately before deciding to award a new contract, issued a misleading statement in their minute of a meeting, and failed to handle Mr C's complaints appropriately. Our investigation did not find evidence to uphold Mr C’s complaints. We found that Mr C had not identified any specific duty on SPT to consult, and there appeared to be no obligation for them to do so before the tendering exercise, although they had surveyed passenger numbers and usages of services. Mr C had told us that he was also aware that in answer to an information request, SPT had said that there had been no consultation. He said that this contradicted a minuted statement by a councillor at SPT's March 2012 operations committee meeting. However, we found that the statement was not in fact made by a member of the committee but by a councillor of a local authority that the ferry served, who had been invited to address the committee. Finally, on the complaints handling matter, we found that in pursuing his complaint Mr C had asked for a prompt response. The chief executive had, therefore, intervened - he had provided a prompt response, thus cutting short the published complaints procedure. The reply was informative, and although it was not to Mr C’s satisfaction, we did not find it inappropriate and it did not disadvantage him. Related reading View Decision Report 201201777 as a PDF (11.39 KB) Updated: March 13, 2018

Mr A intended to use the Gourock to Kilcreggan ferry. When he arrived at the terminal it was clear that there was an issue with the operation of the ferry. He enquired about the ferry services for the rest of the day and was advised that the service had been cancelled for the day. As a result he shared a taxi with other passengers to complete his journey. He sought a refund of this expenditure from the ferry operator, Clyde Marine, and Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT), on whose behalf the service is operated. He was advised that the service had not been cancelled for the day, but was suspended between 16:00 and 17:30 and that the final sailing of the day had gone ahead. In these circumstances neither Clyde Marine nor SPT felt it was appropriate to refund the costs of the taxi journey. SPT advised that their conditions of contract specifically removed them from liability in respect of loss arising for the failure to operate journeys and that their investigation had indicated that it had been staff employed by the operator of the pier facilities who had given Mr A the incorrect information about the cancellation of the services, as Mr A had stated in his first correspondence. Mr A's MSP also complained to SPT about this matter, advising that Mr A had received the information about the cancellation of the service from a helpline operated by Clyde Marine. SPT advised that they had nothing further to add to their previous correspondence. Mr A's MSP raised the matter with the Ombudsman. We decided that as there was no firm, objective evidence of what information Mr A had been given or who by, there would be no practical outcome in our pursuing the matter further. We, therefore, did not uphold the complaint. Related reading View Decision Report 201102183 as a PDF (14.47 KB) Updated: March 13, 2018