Request ID: FOI-0267-2324 Date published: 24 May 2023
You asked
I’m seeking information from Transport For London under the freedom of information act regarding the Night Tube. Please review the below questions and respond in 20 days.
1. Copies of all correspondence (emails, letters, minutes from meetings and so on) from the past 6 years where Transport for London has either discussed or considered extending the Night Tube to more lines and adding more services.
2. The operating costs per year of running the Night Tube over the past 6 years.
3. Details of any incidents that have occurred on the Night Tube over the past 6 years. By accidents I am referring to the following: people being hit by trains, medical incidents, police incidents and incidents involving TFL staff.
4. Details of all legal cases where the Night Tube has been either been the subject of the legal action or has been referenced in legal action against TFL.
5. Details of all legal cases where the night tube has either been the subject of the legal action or has been referenced in legal action taken by TFL.
6. Details of the budget that TFL allocates to the Night Tube over the past 6 years and details of how this budget has been spent over the past 6 years.
7. Details of any marketing or PR activity that TFL has undertaken over the past 6 years to promote the Night Tube.
8. Details of the budget (over the past 6 years) that TFL has allocated to marketing and PR activity for the purposes of promoting the Night Tube. As well as details of what specifically this budget was spent on.
9. Details of any plans that TFL is making or considering to expand the Night Tube service.
We answered
Our Ref: FOI-0267-2324
Thank you for your request received on 27 April 2023 asking for information about the Night Tube.
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.
Unfortunately, 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 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. This is calculated at £25 per hour for every hour spent on the activities described.
We have estimated that it would cost over £450 to provide a response to your current request. This is because it is estimated that it would take in excess of 18 working hours to retrieve and compile the information you have requested.
When requests for correspondence are received we are able to conduct a companywide 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. At present, your request would require us to do a company wide search of all emails that contain the terms ‘Night Tube’ and ‘expansion’. This would be a very speculative search that would likely capture a lot of irrelevant information. We would have to review any of the emails we identified, which is likely to be several thousand in order to determine whether they were captured by your request. Conversely, we would also likely miss potentially relevant information that didn’t include these search terms. In addition to the time taken to search for correspondence we would also need to identify and locate any letters or meeting minutes received, which are likely to be held across the entire business and would likely be very time consuming to identify.
Please note that by their nature, emails contain a significant amount of personal data such as phone numbers and email addresses and so, whilst this 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.
Providing the information for the first part of your request alone is likely to exceed the appropriate limit. To respond to the entirety of your request, particularly as it spans six years’ worth of information will add significantly to the time taken to respond.
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. If you want to refine your request or make a FOI Act request in future, please bear in mind that the FOI Act allows you to request recorded information held by us. You should identify the information that you want as clearly and concisely as you can, specifying the types of document that you are looking for. You might also consider limiting your request to a much narrower period of time or prioritise the information you require.
Before submitting a revised request you may wish to look at the information on the Night Tube that we publish on our website as well as search previous requests that we have responded to on this subject:
Although your request can take the form of a question, rather than a request for specific documents, we do 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.
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
