Highways England - FOI - why not be helpful

Surely the ethos of public service is service?

Mr Mustard read about a PCN issued to a person who had a credit held in their name against their vehicle but didn't realise that Highways England had snaffled it and then they made a crossing and were sent a PCN. Mr Mustard hoped this would be an isolated event but decided to see if the sums of money involved might have mounted up, oh yes they had.

Here is what he asked.

The answer was enormously long, as usual, and here is an extract containing the answer.

Mr Mustard duly went off to fetch his own answer, at this webpage

He opened the Accounts and spent several minutes fruitlessly trawling through for his answer and then got bored and requested a review by Highways England.

It turned out that he had been led up the garden path by Highways England.

Now we find that the first answer was just plain wrong. The answer is to be found in a mere 40 page report. To tell me which page to look at the writer of the FOI review has to find the one figure that I wanted so why not just give it to me instead of making me download and locate it? that would be public service. It's as if Highways England don't want you to know how much they have snaffled of your money. Here you go:

So that is £14,000,000 of account and other credits removed from motorists, possibly affecting a million motorists. Mr Mustard knows it would be expensive to contact them all but with an income of £200m it would be the fair thing to do.

Penalty income, some of it from motorists whose credit balances they have snaffled, and much of it by innocent error by motorists who live nowhere near Kent, is pretty hefty as well, accounting for a third of all income.

The end.