Request ID: FOI-0133-2324 Date published: 04 May 2023
You asked
I am writing to you under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Please could you provide the following information in an Excel spreadsheet:
- The total number of reports of debris on roads managed by TFL in 2020, 2021, and 2022
- The total number of incidents / accidents caused by objects falling from vehicles in 2020, 2021, and 2022
- The ten roads which had the most reports of debris in 2022
- The five most common types of debris by category (with number of incidents per category) in 2020, 2021, and 2022
If it is not possible to provide the information requested, please provide advice and assistance as to how I can refine my request. If you can identify any ways that my request could be refined, I would be grateful for any further advice and assistance.
If you have any queries, please do not hesitate to contact me via email and I will be very happy to clarify what I am asking for and discuss the request further, my details are outlined below.
We answered
TfL Ref: FOI-0133-2324
Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 11th April 2023 asking for information about debris on roads managed by TfL.
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 am writing to you under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Please could you provide the following information in an Excel spreadsheet:
- The total number of reports of debris on roads managed by TFL in 2020, 2021, and 2022 - The total number of incidents / accidents caused by objects falling from vehicles in 2020, 2021, and 2022 - The ten roads which had the most reports of debris in 2022 - The five most common types of debris by category (with number of incidents per category) in 2020, 2021, and 2022”.
I can confirm that we hold some of the information you require.
Note that TfL proactively publishes road safety data on our website via the following link:
All personal injury collision data is recorded by the police using Department for Transport guidance (see here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/stats19-forms-and-guidance). However, there is no category or field that relates specifically to collisions occurring due to ‘objects falling from vehicles’. There are two fields - ‘Carriageway hazards’ and ‘Vehicle hit object in carriageway’ - which are listed in the overall ‘Other’ category, but by filtering these and then looking to see if “debris” , “rubbish” or “falling”, were mentioned in the free text description we have found no such records. The latest data we have from the police is to the end of November 2022.
Separately to this, our Asset Operations team (which is responsible for the maintenance and safety of the Transport for London Road Network) has reported that for your first question the data they hold is as follows:
2019/20 - 359 2020/21 - 312 2021/22 - 92
However, please note that this does not include instances of debris on roads following road traffic accidents, which is recorded separately and in such a way that we are unable to report on it automatically. This is also the case for your third and fourth questions. Rather, to gather the data to answer these questions we would have to manually review thousands of individual records. This is not possible within the costs limit set out under section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act. Under section 12, TfL is not obliged to provide information if it would cost more than £450 to determine if that information is held, and to then locate, retrireve or extract it from elsewhere. This is calculated at a rate of £25 per hour, equivalent to 18 hours work.
In order to bring this element of your request within the costs limit you may wish to reframe it to narrow its scope - for example, by restricting it to a specific road or area.
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
