Freedom of Information request - Number of private hire drivers that have been asked to provide letter of good conduct
Request ID: FOI-0148-2324 Date published: 16 May 2023
You asked
Dear Transport for London,
Could you please provide me with information pertaining to the number of transport for London registered PHD issued with licences without a letter of good conduct Also the number of PHD licenses issued without having a full checkable DBS history check I.e.back to the age of 18 years of age Dating back the previous 6 years
We answered
Our ref: FOI-0148-2324/GH
Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 15 April 2023 asking for information about private hire vehicle (PHV) drivers. You asked:
Could you please provide me with information pertaining to the number of transport for London registered PHD issued with licences without a letter of good conduct Also the number of PHD licenses issued without having a full checkable DBS history check I.e.back to the age of 18 years of age Dating back the previous 6 years
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’.
The information you have requested would be held in individual driver files. Therefore, in order to answer your request we would need to manually check every driver file in order to locate and then compile the information you have requested. With over 103,500 licensed private hire drivers, this would exceed the ‘appropriate limit’.
To help bring the cost of responding to your requests within the £450 limit, you may wish to consider refining your requests to concentrate on matters which are important to you.
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.
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
