From 1998 to present day, can you please provide all pay offers made to train operators. Be these bonus payments for Boxing Day / olympics 2012 or pay increases of annual salary. What I’m interested in is what the original offers were and what the offer was on agreement with ASLEF trade union. Also was there any ballot for industrial action during these agreements. listing how many days of action were taken each time. For example offer of x was made 1998. After 2 days of strike a revised offer of y was made and accepted.

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Our ref: FOI-0090-2021/GH

Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 20 April 2020 asking for information about pay offers made to train operators since 1998.

Your request has been considered under the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and our information access policy.

I can confirm that we do hold the information you require. However, to provide the information you have requested would exceed the ‘appropriate limit’ of £450 set by the Freedom of Information (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004.

Under section 12 of the FOI Act, we are not obliged to comply with requests if we estimate that the cost of determining whether we hold the information, locating and retrieving it and extracting it from other information would exceed the appropriate limit. In this instance, we estimate that the time required to answer your request would exceed 18 hours which, at £25 per hour (the rate stipulated by the Regulations), exceeds the ‘appropriate limit’.

We do not have a central historical record of full detail of awards and their corresponding history. It is usual for each deal to go through complex negotiations and several iterations of offers. Details of offers for extras e.g. bonus payments are often done separately through other discussions and would require additional work.

You have requested this information for a period of 22 years. Locating and compiling the requested information would easily exceed the appropriate limit of 18 hours in normal times, however, some of the relevant information is held in paper records at our offices which is currently inaccessible while we are impacted by the Covid-19 recommendations and the majority of our office based staff are working from home. Your request would therefore take even longer to answer at the current time.

Although your request can take the form of a question, rather than a request for specific documents, TfL does not have to answer your question if it would require the creation of new information or the provision of a judgement, explanation, advice or opinion that was not already recorded at the time of your request. If you have specific questions relating to these topics we may be more easily able to respond to these than to a request for any information held.

The Government has announced a series of measures to tackle the Coronavirus. It is essential for London, and in particular for all critical workers, that we continue to provide a safe transport network that enables them to make the journeys they need to.

In current circumstances, we are not able to answer FOI requests readily and we ask that you please do not make a request to us at present.

Answering FOI requests will require the use of limited resources and the attention of staff who could be supporting other essential activity. In any event, please note that our response time will be affected by the current situation.

If you are not satisfied with this response please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.

Yours sincerely

Graham Hurt

FOI Case Officer

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

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