TfL Ref: 0097-1718

Thank you for your email received by us on 9 April 2018 asking for information about Private Hire Vehicle (PHV) operator licensing applications.

Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy.  You asked for:
1. How many Operators licencing application were made under app based operators with PHV 101(a) disclosures in last 3 years.
2. Also please provide their name and licence no and duration.
3. I would also like to know how many been renewed and for how long and what fee tier structure was applied to them.
4. Also please provide how many operators did'not renewed licence after 3rd Oct 2018 of fee change structure, For both the app and non-app based operators.
Unfortunately, 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 a request 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. This is calculated at £25 per hour for every hour spent on the activities described.
I can advise that we would need to conduct manual searches of all current and past operators over a three year period which would mean looking through every record to then collate the information you require. Furthermore, we do not differentiate between “app-based operators” and any other private hire operators and so we can not easily isolate our searches in this way in order to answer your questions specifically related to ‘app based operators’ and ‘non-app based operators’ without checking manually.
To help bring the cost of responding to your request within the £450 limit, you may wish to consider narrowing its scope so that we can more easily locate, retrieve and extract the information you are seeking. For example, you may wish to prioritise the information you require and submit a request across a specified, narrower period of time that is less likely to raise concerns about the cost limit
Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal

Yours sincerely

Jasmine Howard
FOI Case Officer
Information Governance
Transport For London