Our Ref:         FOI-0180-2021 / FOI-0181-2021 / FOI-0182-2021 / FOI-0201-2021 / FOI-0207-2021 / FOI-0208-2021 / FOI-0262-2021

Thank you for your requests received on 7, 9, 12, and 21 May 2020.
 
Your requests have been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act and our information access policy.
 
Our records show that you have made seven FOI requests to TfL in a continuous period of 10 working days (excluding bank holidays) up to and including the date of your most recent request of 21 May 2020.
 
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, locating and retrieving it and extracting it from other information would exceed the appropriate limit of £450 provided for in the Freedom of Information (FOI) and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004. This is calculated at £25 per hour for every hour spent on the activities described.
 
We have estimated that it would cost in excess of £450 to provide a response to your current requests. This is because it is estimated that it would take over 18 working hours to retrieve and compile the information you have requested. We are now applying an aggregate cost limit to the outstanding requests which we received from you between 7 to 21 May, inclusive.
 
As you are aware, when requests for email correspondence are received the FOI Case Management team may use a search tool called Discovery Accelerator. This allows us to conduct company wide email searches using keywords, dates and email addresses. The more specific a requester can be as to what they are looking for, the more we can narrow the search and therefore stand a better chance of a more relevant or focused result. A search will then return an amount of ‘hits’ which potentially contain information relating to the search terms used. Each ‘hit’ is a single email, although that email will often consist of a chain of emails containing the search term at least once.
 
All but one of your requests (FOI-0201-2021) asks for correspondence, along with other documentation including handwritten notes, meeting minutes, memorandum, reports, and draft documents. We would have to carry out a search for each of these requests and whilst you have specified in some of your requests whose correspondence you would like to receive (FOI-0182-2021 and FOI-0208-2021 – TfL’s Chief Safety, Health & Environment Officer in both cases) we would still have to do a companywide search in order to ensure all of the relevant correspondence was captured.
 
A large number of the emails we would be able to locate would most likely be irrelevant to your request (for instance, there are likely to have been several general updates or press releases sent to all staff regarding the coronavirus from the Press Office and our internal communications team), and there would be some duplication. However, we would need to manually review all of the emails identified by the search in order to extract and collate the relevant emails.
 
In addition, as you are aware, a large number of TfL staff are currently furloughed and the remaining office-based staff are working from home so they do not have physical access to search for some of the information you have requested, particularly in regard to FOI-0182-2021 regarding the Confidential Incident Reporting and Analysis System and FOI-0207-2021 regarding the Tripartite Agreement between TfL, bus operators, and Unite the Union.
 
Please also note, with regard to your request concerning the review into coronavirus infections and deaths UCL will be carrying out on our behalf (FOI-0262-2021), the terms of reference will be published in due course.
 
While we appreciate there is a high level of interest in the issues you have raised, there is a small team available to respond to these requests and the burden placed on them has to be balanced with their substantive roles. To help bring the cost of responding to your request within the £450 limit, you may wish to prioritise the information you are most interested in and make a single request on a topic, rather than several requests in a short period of time in order to make the best use of the processing time available to you under the FOI Act. Additionally, instead of requesting ‘all’ documentation and correspondence, if you have specific questions it may be easier to answer these.
 
It is also an unavoidable consequence that processing this request would require critical employees to be diverted from their operational responsibilities and, in the current circumstances, we consider that our priority must remain on providing and maintaining an effective transport system to essential workers across the capital and that our limited resources are utilised as effectively as possible to ensure that happens. By their nature, emails contain a significant amount of personal data such as phone numbers and email addresses. Whilst the process of redaction does not feature as part of our considerations on whether the cost limit might apply, the burden created by non-specific requests for emails is significant and this should be borne in mind before submitting requests of this nature.
 
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

[email protected]