Exit from Richmond Athletic Ground TW9 2SF to the A316
Request ID: FOI-0332-2122 Date published: 10 June 2021
You asked
As you will be aware a cyclist was killed in March by a vehicle leaving the Richmond Athletic Ground onto the A316. I want to know what correspondance there has been with external bodies (e.g. Richmond Council) regarding the safety of this junction in the last five years, what safety concerns have been raised and how TFL has responded to these. I would also like to see any internal emails or reports relating to the same junction in the same period.
We answered
TfL Ref 0332-2021/22
Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 17 May 2021 asking for information about the safety of the junction at the exit from Richmond Athletic Ground TW9 2SF to the A316.
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. You asked:As you will be aware a cyclist was killed in March by a vehicle leaving the Richmond Athletic Ground onto the A316. I want to know what correspondence there has been with external bodies (e.g. Richmond Council) regarding the safety of this junction in the last five years, what safety concerns have been raised and how TFL has responded to these. I would also like to see any internal emails or reports relating to the same junction in the same period.
Unfortunately, to provide the specific 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 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 significantly exceed the cost limit to provide a response to your current request. This is because in order to identify and extract the correspondence between TfL and external bodies regarding the safety of the junction that you’ve asked about over the last five years, along with any internal emails or reports relating to the junction, we have carried out a company-wide email search using our search software in order to locate all information we hold which is captured by your request.
The results of the search, which was carried out on the basis of all emails containing the keywords “Richmond Circus" AND "Safety" between 5 May 2016 and 5 May 2021 produced over 130,000 ‘hits’ all of which would have to be manually reviewed to see whether they fall within the scope of your request. It is likely that a large number of the hits would not be relevant to your request, and may be duplicates or emails chains, therefore the actual number of emails covered by your request will likely be a sub-set of these hits. However, locating those that are relevant would require us to review all of them to determine whether the email, or email chain, is relevant to your request and then we would need to extract and compile them. As a result, we have therefore concluded that to manually locate, extract and collate all of the relevant emails caught by such a wide ranging search would considerably exceed the cost limit.
If you wish to make a new request which is within the costs limit you may wish to consider narrowing its scope to focus on the information that is of most importance to you. Before doing so you may wish to review the advice and guidance offered by the Information Commissioner on how best to access information from public bodies, published on its website here (I would, in particualr, point you to the table of “Dos and Don’t’s” that can be found halfway down the page):
The narrower and more specific the scope of your request the more likely it is we will be able to respond positively within the costs limit. Please be aware also that the FOI Act pertains to recorded information only.
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.
If you are considering submitting a further FOI request please think carefully about whether the request is essential at this current time, as answering FOI 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.
Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.
Yours sincerely
Sara Thomas FOI Case Management Team General Counsel Transport for London
