78.— (1) The Authority may appoint such and so many persons as it sees fit to be authorised officers for the purpose of obtaining such information or of carrying out such inspections or any other functions as the Authority may deem necessary for the exercise by the Authority F50[of its functions under this Act, under Part 3 of the Act of 2003 with particular reference to section 49 of that Act or under Part 2 of the Public Transport Regulation Act 2009.]

(2) A person appointed to be an authorised officer by the Authority shall, on his or her appointment, be furnished by the Authority with a certificate of his or her appointment which will indicate the matters in respect of which he or she may act under this section and the period during which the authorisation stands.

(3) An authorised officer, when exercising a power conferred under this section shall, if requested by any person thereby affected, produce the certificate to that person for inspection together with an appropriate form of identification.

(4) In this section and in section 79 “documents, records or other information” includes—

(a) books, accounts, rolls, registers, papers and other documents, whether—

(i) comprised in bound volume, loose-leaf binders or other loose-leaf filing system, loose-leaf ledger sheets, pages, folios or cards, or

(ii) kept on microfilm, magnetic tape or in any non-legible form (by the use of electronics or otherwise) which is capable of being reproduced in a legible form,

(b) every electronic or other automatic means, if any, by which any such thing in non-legible form is so capable of being reproduced, and

(c) documents in manuscript, documents which are typed, printed, stencilled or created by any other mechanical or partly mechanical process in use from time to time and documents which are produced by any photographic or photostatic process.

(5) Subject to this section, an authorised officer may, in respect of the functions of the Authority, serve on a public transport authority or public transport operator a notice in writing, requiring the public transport authority or public transport operator, as the case may be, within such period as may be specified in the notice, not being less than 21 days from the date of the service of the notice, to do either or both of the following, namely—

(a) to deliver to, or to make available for inspection by, the authorised officer such documents, records or other information as are in the possession, power or procurement of the public transport authority or public transport operator and as contain, or may (in the authorised officer’s opinion formed on reasonable grounds) contain, information relevant to the functions of the Authority,

(b) to give to the authorised officer, in writing or otherwise, such information, explanations and particulars as the authorised officer may reasonably require, being information, explanations and particulars that are relevant to the functions of the Authority,

and which are specified in the notice.

(6) Where, in compliance with the requirements of a notice served on a public transport authority or public transport operator under subsection (5), a public transport authority or public transport operator makes available for inspection by an authorised officer, documents, records or other information, the public transport authority or public transport operator shall afford the authorised officer reasonable assistance, including information, explanations and particulars, in relation to the use of all the electronic or other automatic means, if any, by which the documents, records or other information, in so far as they are in a non-legible form, are capable of being reproduced in a legible form, and any data equipment or any associated apparatus or material.

(7) Where, under subsection (5), a public transport authority or public transport operator makes documents, records or other information available for inspection by the authorised officer, the authorised officer may make extracts from or copies of all or any part of the documents, records or other information.

(8) Nothing in this section shall be taken to compel the production by any person of a document which he or she would be exempt from production in proceedings in a court on the ground of legal professional privilege.

(9) A person who—

(a) obstructs or impedes an authorised officer in carrying out his or her functions under this section, or

(b) gives false or misleading information, explanations or particulars to an authorised officer when required under subsection (5),

commits an offence.