Freedom of Information request - Closure of Station Approach, Yiewsley to public service vehicles from 15th January 2020
Request ID: FOI-0340-2122 Date published: 03 June 2021
You asked
Dear Transport for London,
From 15th January 2020, presumably in response to safety concerns to passengers and vehicles over the deteriorating road surface, TfL contractors Metroline West and Abellio London ceased to serve the bus stops outside West Drayton station.
You are requested to provide the following:
Any correspondence with Network Rail, London Borough of Hillingdon and Thames Water prior to 15th January 2020 in respect of this intended closure to buses.
Any written documents (minutes, e-mails, etc.) within TfL regarding the closure of the two bus stops and the diversion of services 222, 350, U1, U3 and U5.
Instructions to your two contractors (Metroline West and Abellio London) issued to them immediately prior to the closure of the bus stops and diversion of the services.
We answered
Our ref: FOI-0340-2122/GH
Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 16 May 2021 asking for information about the closure of Station Approach, Yiewsley to public service vehicles.
Your request has been considered under the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and our information access policy.
I can confirm that we do hold the information you require. However, 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 requests 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. In this instance, we estimate that the time required to answer your request would exceed 18 hours which, at £25 per hour (the rate stipulated by the Regulations), exceeds the ‘appropriate limit’.
The person who was mainly responsible for liaising with any of the parties mentioned in your request has now left TfL. As it is likely that other members of staff would also have been involved, to answer your request we would need to carry out an email search across all employees (as we are unable to focus such a search on specific teams). This would inevitably identify a large number of emails which would all need to be manually checked to see if they were relevant to your request, which would take an excessive amount of time.
We can, however, advise that the bus stops have been closed and the buses diverted away from the station due to the sub base of the carriageway failing under the continued weight of buses and Cross Rail/HS2 construction traffic using the road. The issue with the carriageway has been ongoing for some years and the owner of the carriageway(Network Rail/Cross Rail/HS2) have been in negotiation with Hillingdon borough to carry out the required full reconstruction of the carriageway.
We anticipate that these bus stops will reopen by mid-June 2021.
If you are considering submitting a further FOI request within the £450 limit, you may wish to consider refining your requests to concentrate on matters which are important to you. We also request that you 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.
If you are not satisfied with this response please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.
Yours sincerely
Graham Hurt FOI Case Officer FOI Case Management Team General Counsel Transport for London
