COUNCIL bosses have been told to reveal how many tickets allowing York bus passengers to travel on different operators’ services have been sold after originally turning down a Freedom of Information (FOI) request.

City of York Council was asked to disclose details of sales of the All York ticket through an FOI request, but the authority said the information was “commercially confidential” and should not be made public.

The Information Commissioners Office has now ruled the overall ticket sales should be disclosed, saying the council had not outlined why this would lead to an individual bus firm’s sales being revealed.

Former council leader Steve Galloway, who raised the issue last year, said bus passengers had “several outstanding issues” with the authority, saying: “The most serious of these is a failure to publish on a regular basis reliability information on local bus services, and hopefully the council will now side with passengers in their quest for timely information about bus service operations in the city.”

Richard Wood, the council’s assistant director of city and environmental services, said the All York scheme was “a good example of partnership working between bus operators and the council” and its cost was met through Government funding rather than York taxpayers.

He said bus operators had had concerns about disclosing what they believed to be confidential information, but the details would now be published.