I requested the detail (including project name, date of award and value) of all TfL/LU contracts awarded to WPA Architects.

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TfL Ref: FOI-0112-2021

Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 24^th April 2020 asking for information about contracts awarded to WPA architects.

Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy. 

Specifically you asked:

“I requested the detail (including project name, date of award and value) of all TfL/LU contracts awarded to WPA Architects.”

I can confirm that we hold the information you require. However, given the wording of your request, it is not possible to respond to it within the £450 costs limit for responding to cases, as set out in section 12 of the FOI Act. Under section 12, a public authority such as TfL is not required to respond to a request if it would cost more than the £450 limit to determine if the information is held, and to then locate, retrieve or extract that information from elsewhere. This is calculated at a rate of £25 per hour, equivalent to 18 hours work. Given your request contains no timeframe, in order to find all of the information that falls within its scope we would have to search records going back to the beginning of TfL / the London Underground’s existence, something that is not possible within the costs limit.

In order to bring your request within the costs limit you may wish to narrow its scope to focus more directly on the information that is of most importance to you. For example, you may wish to identity a timeframe. Clearly, the shorter that timeframe is the more likely it is that we will be able to source the information within the costs limit. Further, a colleague in our Commercial team has suggested that it would be useful for us to know more detail about the exact company in question - he tells me that an initial review of his immediate records for “WPA” has only found a company called “Westminster Property Assoc”, but it is not clear to us if this is the company you are interested in.

If you do consider submitting a refined request, please note that we already publish a large amount of information on our website (https://tfl.gov.uk/), and I would ask you to first consider the information that can be found there. In particular, you should review our contacts register here: https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/publications-and-reports/contracts-greater-than-5000

You may also wish to consider the information and advice found on the Information Commissioner’s website on how best to access information from public bodies that can be found on its website here: https://ico.org.uk/your-data-matters/official-information/ Note that the advice from the Commissioner includes the following:

Don’t… Deliberately ‘fish’ for information by submitting a very broad or random requests in the hope it will catch something noteworthy or otherwise useful.

On a more general matter, please note that the Government has announced a series of measures to tackle the coronavirus. It is essential for London that we continue to provide a safe transport network for essential journeys.

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.

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,

David Wells

FOI Case Officer

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

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