TfL Ref: FOI-0451-2223
Thank you for your letter received by Transport for London on 25th May 2022 asking various questions about our services.
Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy.
Specifically you asked:
“Please let me know if London Dial A Ride will be recruiting more bus drivers.
And let me know total cost of modernising Northern Line tube and all the stations being modernised. And which firms did the job to modernise this line and at what cost to TfL and how much were bids of other firms to do this work.
Will Mr Grant Shapps give more money to TfL when the money expires in June 2022.
People are evading fares on London buses so please send more inspectors to check tickets of passengers during peak times.
How much money Dial A Ride paid to Hackney, Brent and Waltham Forest Community Transport who provide their buses on contract to Dial A Ride for year 2022-23.
How much Dial A Ride paid to coal(?) Cab for their contracting for year 2022-23.
Will all London buses go electric in year 2030 and which firms provide all buses in London.
And how long is bus contract - 3 or 5 years.
And how much rent TfL gets from shops at Underground stations for year 2022-23.
Please let me know which firms will provide new trains for London Underground in future and and what cost and is it for hire or bought out right.”
I can confirm that we hold the information you require. However, I am afraid your request is being refused under section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act. Under section 12, TfL is not obliged to respond to a request if it would cost more than £450 to determine if the requested information is held, and to then locate, retrieve or extract that information from elsewhere. This is calculated at a rate of £25 per hour. In assessing the cost of compliance the Act allows public bodies to aggregate any requests from the same applicant for the same or similar information received in any 60 consecutive day period. That provision applies in this instance given your other recent, similar request of 29th April 2022 which was answered on 19th May 2022 (under reference FOI-0234-2223).
In order to bring your request within the costs limit you may wish to narrow its scope to focus on the information that is of most importance to you. In considering any refined request you may also wish to follow the advice issued by the Information Commissioner on how best to access information from public bodies which includes the following:
Don’t...Make repeat requests unless circumstances, or the information itself, have changed to the extent that there are justifiable grounds to ask for the information again.
Don’t... Disrupt a public authority by the sheer weight of requests or the volume of information requested.
Don’t...Submit frivolous or trivial requests; remember that processing any information request involves some cost to the public purse.
Do...Think about whether making a request is the best way of achieving what you want.
Do...Stay focused on the line of enquiry you are pursuing. Don’t let your attention start to drift onto issues of minor relevance.
Further advice can be found on the Information Commissioner’s website here:
https://ico.org.uk/your-data-matters/official-information/
Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.
Yours sincerely,
David Wells,
FOI Case Officer
FOI Case Management Team
General Counsel
Transport for London
