Significant errors with Fuel Finder – including over 500 forecourts having incorrect location information listed and over a dozen sites selling fuel for unrealistic prices – “flag an urgent need to address data quality issues” with the system, according to a new analysis.
Research carried out by RAC Foundation – a transport thinktank and charity separate from the breakdown firm – has identified scores of errors with Fuel Finder data.
Some 116 forecourts are listed with latitudes and longitudes that place them in preposterous positions, including in rivers, seas and other countries, while the locations of 368 sites place them more than 100 miles away from where their postcode indicates they should be.
A further 47 filling stations share exact latitudes and longitudes with other forecourts listed in the database.
Individual listing errors include the Grade Filling Station in Redcar, Yorks, having the same location as the London Eye on the Thames; EG On The Move’s Lower Earley site in Berkshire being listed on the Isle of Sheppey, Kent; and Cliftonhill Service Station in Coatbridge, North Lanarkshire, can apparently be found by drivers heading to the South Atlantic.
The thinktank also identified nine forecourts apparently selling fuel at under 2ppl, with three listed as charging over £15 a litre.
Given the automated nature of third-party firms’ IT integration with Fuel Finder, such mistakes could filter through to consumers and result in lost or frustrated motorists.
The RAC Foundation also found 123 sites have not made any price changes since the Iranian conflict began, while 198 forecourts haven’t updated prices in the past fortnight. This indicates a significant number of sites are not compliant with regulations mandating any changes are shared with the system within 30 minutes of them being made.
Steve Gooding, director of the RAC Foundation, commented: “Repeated anomalies in Fuel Finder flag an urgent need to address data quality issues or risk them undermining this potentially valuable service.
“For a flagship project like Fuel Finder we’d expect the designers to be at the top of their digital game - but the presence of errors that could fatally undermine confidence in the data suggest the system is missing some simple, pretty standard sense-checks that stops mistakes like these making their way into the system in the first place.”
Location and pricing misinformation is likely down to human error when manually inputting data into the system, but the government contract for the ‘aggregator’ that won the contract to build and run Fuel Finder – a company called VE3 Global – puts responsibility on the firm to ensure the data is correct. The contract stipulates the aggregator will:
“Ensure that data is efficiently collected in the agreed formats, cleanse the data, validate the data, convert the data into agreed formats and disseminate the data to Third Parties.”
VE3 Global has previously stated it has a “collaborative partnership” with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, which has oversight of the scheme, and that it has delivered the system “in line with agreed milestones”.
