Our ref: FOI-0541-2425

Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 14 May 2024 asking for information on air quality research.

Your request has been considered under the requirements of the Environmental Information Regulations and our information access policy. 

I can confirm that we do hold the information you require. However, we are refusing your request under Regulation 12(4)(b) as we believe that the request is ‘manifestly unreasonable’. The information you have requested isn’t directly reportable and would require us to manually locate, extract, review and cross-reference a large volume of data to ensure that we have caught all of the information caught by your request. We publish reports of all TfL expenditure over £250 on our website (https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/publications-and-reports/expenditure) but ascertaining which payments specifically relate to ‘research on air quality’ would require significant additional resource across multiple areas of the organisation. In addition, as your request also covers ‘individual scientists’ we would need to identify what, if any, scientists may be caught by this request and identify, review and collate the requested information accordingly, which would exacerbate the burden explained above. 

We consider that providing the requested information would place an unreasonable burden on us, as it would be a significant distraction from our work managing the TfL network, requiring re-allocation of already limited resources, and placing an unacceptable burden on a small number of personnel. We do wish to clarify that whilst we consider that your request falls under regulation 12(4)(b), this does not reflect a conclusion that it has been your intention to deliberately place an undue burden on our resources.
 
The use of this exception is subject to a public interest test, which requires us to consider whether the public interest in applying the exception outweighs the public interest in disclosure. We recognise that the release of information would promote accountability and transparency in public services and may help address your particular concerns about this issue. However, the diversion of our limited and specialist resources across several areas of the organisation required to process this request would cause detriment to our core functions and on balance we consider that the public interest currently favours the use of the exception. 

As explained above, we would invite you to review and consider the published expenditure data published at the link provided and you may wish to resubmit your request to focus on any specific payments of interest. Additionally, a significant volume of information on this and other subjects is published on our website in response to other FOI/EIR requests which may assist with providing information you are interested in at the following link: https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/transparency/freedom-of-information/search

If you are not satisfied with this response please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.

Yours sincerely,

Tahsin Prima

FOI Case Officer

General Counsel

Transport for London