Schedule 17 Old Oak Common Lane Cycle Study Report
Request ID: FOI-0164-2122 Date published: 27 May 2021
You asked
A copy of this report, 1CP02-BVS_WSP-PL-REP-SS07-000001, is at:
9396-1396791686.pdf (london.gov.uk)
It states:
"1.1.5: The cycle lane study has developed through a series of workshops with OPDC, London Borough of Ealing (LBE), London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham (LBHF), and Transport for London (TfL). Discussions with stakeholders will continue on cycle provision as the highway realignment and wider public realm develops."
Please provide:
(1) A copy of all data, internal and external, held by you, from your first involvement with the subject considered in this report, until the publication date (20/04/2020).
None of this data is redactable now, in a 'safe space' for policy discussion as defined by the Information Commissioner's Office.
(2) A copy of all data held by you on this subject, from that publication date, to date.
I would like copies of meeting minutes, reports, briefings, and internal/external emails, please, starting from when discussions on the subject started with the other bodies mentioned and as a result, HS2 Ltd was pressured into funding the report mentioned below.
We answered
TfL Ref: FOI-0164-2021 Thank you for your request received by us on 25 April 2021 asking for information about Old Oak Common cycle study.
Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Environmental Information Regulations (EIRs) and our information access policy. We do hold some of the information you have requested. The Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation (OPDC) enquired about potentially commissioning TfL to design a cycleway on Old Oak Common Lane approximately a year ago. Please find some background email chains attached. Apart from that, we don’t believe TfL has had any further involvement in this and we are not aware of any meeting minutes.
Please note that in accordance with TfL’s obligations under the Data Protection legislation some personal data has been removed, as required by Regulation 13 of the Environmental Information Regulations. This is because disclosure of this personal data would be a breach of the legislation, specifically the first principle of the legislation, which requires all processing of personal data to be fair and lawful. It would not be fair to disclose this personal information when the individuals have no expectation it would be disclosed and TfL has not satisfied one of the conditions of Schedule 2 which would make the processing ‘fair’. We have also carried an email search using terms such as ‘Wormwood Scrubs’, ‘Old Oak Common Lane’, ‘Scrubs Lane’, ‘Cycle Lane Study’ from 1 April 2019 to present daywhich returned over 5,000 hits. As you will appreciate all of these would need to be manually checked to see if they were relevant to your request and suitable for release. Some of the emails would likely to be not relevant or duplicates, due to emails being repeated within email chains. Whilst the actual number of emails covered by your request might be a sub-set of the numbers the email search captured, it is the excessive work involved in having to locate and extract those that are relevant and meet your request, that would be very burdensome. Therefore, given the extent of the work involved in processing your request, we are applying Regulation 12(4)(b) as we believe that the request is ‘manifestly unreasonable’ because providing the information you have requested would impose unreasonable costs on us and require an unreasonable diversion of resources. The use of this exception is subject to a public interest test, which requires us to consider whether the public interest in applying the exception outweighs the public interest in disclosure. We recognise that the release of information would promote accountability and transparency in public services and also help address your particular concerns about this issue. However, the time it would take to provide the information you have requested would divert a disproportionate amount of our resources from its core functions and on balance we consider that the public interest currently favours the use of the exception. If you are considering submitting a further request please think carefully about whether the request is essential at this current time, as answering FOI/EIR requests will require the use of limited resources and the attention of staff who could be supporting other essential activity. Where requests are made, please note that our response time may be impacted by the current situation.
If this is not the information you are looking for, or if you are unable to access it for any reason, please do not hesitate to contact me.
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
Eva Hextall FOI Case Management Team General Counsel Transport for London
