Request ID: FOI-0397-2122 Date published: 09 June 2021
You asked
As Yamaha are apparently unable to provide a Certificate of Conformity for any motorcycle they manufactured prior to the year 2000, and as I have a 1986 XJ900F registration E77BVM I would like to find out how many Certificate of Conformity Tfl have received by Yamaha XJ900 motorcycle owners in order to prove that the ULEZ charge is not a valid charge on their machine.
If possible I would like to get the information below to note the following please:
1. Breakdown to show the number of Certificates received by TfL by manufacturer, model and year of manufacture specifically and only for Yamaha XJ900 (all models and all years).
We answered
TfL Ref: FOI-0397-2122
Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 27th May 2021 asking for information about Yamaha XJ900 motorcycles.
Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy.
Specifically you asked:
“As Yamaha are apparently unable to provide a Certificate of Conformity for any motorcycle they manufactured prior to the year 2000, and as I have a 1986 XJ900F registration E77BVM I would like to find out how many Certificate of Conformity Tfl have received by Yamaha XJ900 motorcycle owners in order to prove that the ULEZ charge is not a valid charge on their machine.
If possible I would like to get the information below to note the following please:
1. Breakdown to show the number of Certificates received by TfL by manufacturer, model and year of manufacture specifically and only for Yamaha XJ900 (all models and all years).”
I can confirm that we hold the information you require. However, I am afraid that there is no easy or efficient way of sourcing it and therefore your request is being refused under section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act. Under section 12, TfL is not required to respond to a request if it would cost more than £450 to determine if the information is held, and to then locate, retrieve or extract that information from elsewhere. This is calculated at a cost of £25 per hour, equivalent to 18 hours work. In this instance the information requested is not already collated and is not readily available. Rather, in order to source it we would have to check thousands of individual records where Penalty Charge Notices (PCNs) have been issued and challenged. Given the numbers involved this is not possible within the costs limit.
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. For example, you may wish to limit your request to a specific period of time - however, note that thousands of PCNs are issued every month and so even a very narrow timeframe may still require an inordinate amount of work.
More general information about ULEZ compliance can be found on our website here:
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 as well as information on copyright and what to do if you would like to re-use any of the information we have disclosed.
Yours sincerely,
David Wells FOI Case Officer FOI Case Management Team General Counsel Transport for London
