Request ID: FOI-0199-2223 Date published: 26 May 2022
You asked
Are you able to provide the details the terms and monitoring process for the 2 contractors below? And details of any incidents or accidents that both companies are ‘(Morson International’ and ‘Cleshar Contract Services’) have been involved with since June 2019 ? this is to include all contracts and services.
Thank you for your requests of 28th April 2022 and 6th May 2022 following up your earlier request under reference FOI-0043-2223. Your new requests are detailed at the bottom of the page.
Your requests have been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy.
I can confirm that we hold some of the information you require. However, it is not possible to source the information to answer all of your questions within the appropriate limit for responding to requests as 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 the requested information is held, and to then locate, retrieve or extract it from elsewhere. This is calculated at a rate of £25 per hour, equivalent to 18 hours work. Where the same applicant has made a request for the same or similar information within any 60 consecutive day period then those requests can be aggregated for the purposes of calculating costs. This applies to the three new requests below along with your previous, already answered request.
As an example of the time it would take to respond, to address the single question under reference FOI-0256-2223 we would need to manually review over 600 records to source the information as there is no automated way of extracting the detail requested. Even at a conservative estimate of 2 minutes per record, this would take over 1,200 minutes, which is in itself above the 18 hour threshold (which equates to 1,080 minutes). Clearly, taking into account the time already spent answering case ref FOI-0043-2223 and the time that would have to be spent answering your other new requests, the aggregated costs limit would be far exceeded.
In order to bring your requests within the costs limit you may wish to reframe them to narrow their scope. Note that any request asking us to review several years’ worth of data is likely to be excessively time consuming. Note also that some of your questions may be better addressed elsewhere - for example, for information about the activities of the ORR you can send an FOI request directly to that body, via its website here:
Finally, in considering any revised request I would suggest that you read the advice and guidance provided by the Information Commissioner on how best to access information from public bodies, published on its website here:
As you can see, the table of “Dos and Don’ts” found halfway down that page includes the following advice:
Don’t... “Disrupt a public authority by the sheer weight of requests or the volume of information requested.”
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.”
Do... “Think about whether making a request is the best way of achieving what you want.”;
And;
Do... “Give the authority ample opportunity to address any previous requests you have made before submitting new ones.”
Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.
Yours sincerely,
David Wells FOI Case Officer FOI Case Management Team General Counsel Transport for London
