Request ID: FOI-0207-2223 Date published: 27 May 2022
You asked
Follow-on form FOI-2991-2122:
1. Please could you tell me how many complaints of racism in relation to words used or behaviour exhibited were made against your employees in the 2020/21 financial year, where the complaint was made by another member of TfL staff.
2. For each complaint could you provide me with a summary of the allegation that was made ensuring no personal details are revealed. Please be sure to provide the specific racist language that was allegedly used and complained about if racist language was part of the complaint.
3. Please provide me with a table showing what sanctions, if any, were taken against staff in relation to these allegations
We answered
Our Ref: FOI-0207-2223
Thank you for your clarification received on 3 May 2022 regarding your request for information about complaints of racism made against TfL staff instigated by other members of TfL staff.
Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act and our information access policy. I can confirm we do hold the information you require.
1. Please could you tell me how many complaints of racism in relation to words used or behaviour exhibited were made against your employees in the 2020/21 financial year, where the complaint was made by another member of TfL staff. 2. For each complaint could you provide me with a summary of the allegation that was made ensuring no personal details are revealed. Please be sure to provide the specific racist language that was allegedly used and complained about if racist language was part of the complaint. 3. Please provide me with a table showing what sanctions, if any, were taken against staff in relation to these allegations
There have been 192 recorded complaints of ‘Harassment’ during the requested period. However, as per our previous responses, we would need to review each of these cases in order to provide any further information. Please be aware that due to the nature of complaints, the issues raised can be multi-faceted and not limited to just one issue. Not all complaints listed under the category ‘harassment’ will contain any elements of racism and it may also be the case that complaints listed under other categories may have a racism element contained within wider complaints. As a result this is not something that can be easily reported on and not all complaints regarding racism will feature overt racism in the form of words used and may instead be suspicions based on perceptions of behaviour. Therefore the only way to determine what information is held that fits within the scope of your request would be a detailed manual review of all elements of a complaint file.
As such, to provide the information you have requested would still 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 a request if we estimate that the cost of determining whether we hold the information, and then locating and retrieving it, or extracting it from other information, would exceed the appropriate limit. This is calculated at £25 per hour for every hour spent on the activities described, which equates to 18 hours work.
We have estimated that your revised request would still cost in excess of £2400 to provide a response to your current request. This is because it is estimated that it could take over 96 working hours to retrieve and compile the information you have requested. As stated in our previous responses, the team have estimated that it could take approximately 30 minutes to review each case file to identify and extract the requested information.
To help bring the cost of responding to your request within the £450 limit, you may wish to consider narrowing its scope so that we can more easily locate, retrieve and extract the information you are seeking, bearing in mind the information above. As advised previously, this information is not held in a way that the data you have requested can be extracted easily or without the need to review individual case files. As any such requests are likely to exceed the cost limit you may wish to request different information. Please be aware that any timeframe that fits within the cost limit will be likely to only provide you with a very narrow subset of information which is therefore likely to be of limited value. We would recommend you instead focus your request on figures based around specific reporting categories rather than detail that can only be obtained by reviewing the contents of complaint files.
Please note that we will not be taking further action until we receive your revised request.
In the meantime, if you have any queries or would like to discuss your request, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.
Yours sincerely
Gemma Jacob Senior FOI Case Officer FOI Case Management Team General Counsel Transport for London
