Council defends block on ferry firm questions

Bristol City Council officers have defended their role in preventing a whistleblower from asking questions at a public meeting of councillors over the questionable death and instant rebirth of a ferry boat company in the city.

Steve Virgin had submitted questions to the Place Scrutiny Committee, which was held earlier. 

The committee, made up of councillors, is in position to examine how the council operates and aims to provide transparent government at City Hall.

Virgin had asked for more details about how council officers had dealt with the Bristol Ferry Boat Company (BFBC) – which was part-owned by mayor George Ferguson – in the run-up to it being declared insolvent at the end of 2012. 

He demanded to know how an almost identical company set up within months to replace the doomed BFBC had been able to secure routes around Bristol’s harbourside, without going through a standard tendering process.

‘Favourable treatment’

He suggested that the company had received favourable treatment from officers thanks to the links it had with mayor Ferguson and his friends.

Virgin had submitted similar questions as Freedom of Information (FOI) requests last month, and had not been given answers within the time limit required by public bodies to provide information.

But a senior officer at the council said the FOI requests had been the reason behind withdrawing questions from the committee at the last minute.

Bristol City Council’s chief transport officer Peter Mann apologised to Virgin for not getting responses to the series of FOIs within the accepted time limit.

He added the answers to the questions were “close to being finalised” but that the efforts taken to provide answers to the FOI requests meant it had become difficult to then give full answers to the same questions at scrutiny committee.

Chair of the Place Scrutiny Committee, Cllr Christian Martin, said it was a “strange precedent” that was being set, when FOI requests “trumped” questions from the public to the committee.

“It is regrettable. What is the purpose of scrutiny committees if this can happen?” he asked.

“We are adrift here between the reality of what we are trying to examine and the black hole where the answers to these questions should be.”

No confidence in democratic process

Among the questions Virgin had asked were whether the council was “negligent” in providing BFBC a licence to operate when it was in financial difficulties; and whether the firm had followed proper financial procedures in the run-up to its liquidation.

“I was shocked when I found out my questions had been pulled from the meeting,” he said.

“There is real concern over the ferry issue, and my questions were an effort to help the committee discover what has really been going on.

“But the way my questions have been pulled means scrutiny committees give me no confidence in the democratic process in Bristol.”

Mr Virgin added he had no faith that full answers to his FOI requests will emerge, despite the promises of officers.

Meanwhile, officers were forced to deny that they favoured particular ferry companies, insisting they were looking to “build goodwill and cooperation”.

They added that it was “not our role” to scrutinise the management of companies wanting to run services.

A new Community Interest Company was set up after the Bristol Ferry Boat Company went out of business in the run-up to Christmas 2012 with debts of hundreds of thousands of pounds – of which part was owed to Bristol City Council.

Unfair advantages

The original founder of the firm Ian Bungard, and a group of six others including sustainable transport campaign Keith Hallett, successfully bid to buy the fleet of yellow and blue boats which belonged to the Bristol Ferry Boat Company at auction.

But Richard Rankin from Number Seven Boat Trips told the meeting that the former BFBC owners had “welched” on agreements with operators and had received an unfair economic advantage against firms such as his.

Mr Hallett, also present at the meeting, denied the accusation or that there was any kind of “war” between the different ferry companies. He also insisted the new company was “completely different” to the bankrupted BFBC.

He did admit though that Mr Bungard maintained a 20% ownership of the new CIC.

A review of ferry services is due to take place in March 2015, but officers said that unless “circumstances change” it was “hard to see why we would change the [ferry service and timetable] arrangements”.