Request ID: FOI-0077-2223 Date published: 17 May 2022
You asked
Hi
Under the Freedom of Information Act, please can I request the Control Logs/ Incident Logs for Thursday 7th April 2022 for all London Underground Lines.
We answered
TfL Ref: 0077-2223
Thank you for your request received by us on 14 April and following clarification 25 April 2022 asking for information about London Underground logs. Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy. I can confirm that we hold the information you require. You asked for:
Control Logs/ Incident Logs for Thursday 7th April 2022 for all London Underground Lines
recorded incidents that impacted normal running of the working timetable. I assume these would be complied by Control and Signalling Centres (possibly in timeline form) and details what the incident was, what was done aid service recovery and how this effected the service.
These would then be shared to relevant internal stakeholders such as Area Managers and Performance teams to understand what happened and see if what can be done to handle the incident better.
I can confirm that whilst we hold the information you require, this is being refused under section 14 of the Freedom of Information Act. Section 14 applies where meeting a request is likely to cause a disproportionate or unjustified level of disruption, irritation or distress, and where its impact on a public authority cannot be justified.
In this case, the exemption applies given the amount of effort that would be required to scrutinise the material in question in contrast to its limited public interest. We can advise there are 119 London Underground Control Centre logs for Thursday 7 April 2022, each of which we would need to extract and review in detail due to potential security risks and business critical data from their disclosure. Redactions on this basis would be required, which would be a burdensome task given the volume of material involved. To explain further, disclosing any of these logs could prejudice the security of London Underground’s stations and operations, on account of containing potentially sensitive safety, security and operational detail, which could endanger the safety of both staff and the general public if released in the public domain. It is therefore very likely that one or more exemptions would need to be considered against large portions of the requested information.
We do wish to clarify that whilst we consider that your request falls under section 14(1) of the FOI Act, this does not reflect a conclusion that it has been your intention to deliberately place an undue burden on our resources, however, we must consider potential disclosure of material to be to the public at large. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) guidance provides the following examples of a request which may fall under section 14(1): - Imposes a burden by obliging the authority to sift through a substantial volume of information to isolate and extract the relevant details; Encompasses information which is only of limited value because of the wide scope of the request; - Creates a burden by requiring the authority to spend a considerable amount of time considering any exemptions and redactions. Our view is that two of these examples apply in this instance.
Therefore we are refusing your request under s.14 of the FOI Act. Whilst we recognise the requested information will be of interest to some people, we do not consider that the wider public interest is served by the diversion of resources that would be necessary to answer this request, especially given the potential detriment to station and public security, if we were to comply with your request.
In the meantime, we publish a variety of performance data in relation to the London Underground network. As our website states ‘London Underground monitor operational performance to assess how we are performing against our key performance metrics. This includes measures for journey time, reliability, network disruptions, how far trains have travelled, and how many trains, lifts and escalators are in service’. Please see the following link for further information: https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/publications-and-reports/underground-services-performance
If this is not the information you are looking for, or if you are unable to access it for any reason, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal as well as information on copyright and what to do if you would like to re-use any of the information we have disclosed.
Yours sincerely
Jasmine Howard FOI Case Officer FOI Case Management Team General Counsel Transport for London
