- Title or Description
- Private Taxi Spend
- FOI Number
- 2024276
- Date Received
- 04/03/2024
- Type of Request
- FOI
- Request or Question
- I would like to know how much Scottish Borders council spent on private taxis per year over the last 5 years and what the breakdown of those costs are. By breakdown, I mean what are the justification breakdowns in agreeing the parameters of acceptance for a taxi journey.
- Response
-
Firstly, I would like to apologise for the delay in responding to your information request. The Council has considered your request and interpreted this as seeking information relating to staff and not taxis for school transport etc. However, to comply with your request would exceed the £600 cost limit.To explain, the Council’s financial coding structure is not set up to extract data to respond to this FOI easily, the code includes all vehicle hire, buses, vans etc. Whilst the Council’s Finance team could remove some entries that do not fall within scope, they are unable to identify all (and justify) for the requirements of your FOI. As such, information extracted would need to be considered by individual Service Manager which would exceed the cost threshold.
To be of assistance, I would like to share the Council’s Employee Travel and Mileage Policy which recommends, where travel is necessary, that public transport is used in the first instance followed by the Council’s pool cars. Any other type of travel is discouraged but will be reimbursed if needed.
Two service areas had been able to undertake this piece of work. Whilst this is not the total amount, to be of some assistance, it has been agreed to share this.
Dementia Village, Holland – June 2019 £255.49
Meetings in Edinburgh 22/23 July 2019 £21.10
Public Service Comms, London 10 Sept 2019 £50.60
London 9 – 11 May 2023 Visits to Pensions, CGI (the Council’s outsourced IT provider) and Apple Total £198.50
Date Journey 2022-23 2023-24 29/02/24 Tweedbank > Yetholm £ 47.00
01/09/23 Various > Peebles return £ 795.00
09/08/23 Ancrum > Glentress via Gala return £ 135.00
11/05/23 Gala > Heiton via Ancrum return £ 120.00
14/03/23 TD5 xxx > Peebles return £ 145.00
07/03/23 Tweedbank > Yetholm £ 60.00
£ 205.00 £ 1,097.00 - Link to download
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