Request ID: FOI-0585-2223 Date published: 07 July 2022
You asked
The current consultation on expanding the ULEZ contains the following statement on page 11:
“To continue to be an effective deterrent, we propose to increase the penalty charge notice amount for non-payment from £160 to £180. The charge will be reduced by 50 per cent if paid within 14 days. Any revenue raised would be invested back into London’s transport network.”
Essentially, the text cited above implies that TFL considers that £160 is not an effective deterrent but £180 is. I want to see the evidence base for this.
Accordingly I require:
1. All internal documents or emails relating to the proposal to increase in penalty charge
2. All evidence, whether internally generated or externally sourced, which relate to the increase in penalty charge.
We answered
Our Ref: FOI-0585-2223
Thank you for your request received on 10 June 2022 asking for information about the increase of the ULEZ penalty charge.
Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) and our information access policy. I can confirm we do hold the information you require. You asked for:
1. All internal documents or emails relating to the proposal to increase in penalty charge
When requests for email correspondence are received the FOI Case Management Team are able to do a search of our archive using keywords, dates and email addresses. The more specific a requester can be as to what they are looking for, the more we can narrow the search and therefore stand a better chance of a more relevant or focused result. A search will then return an amount of ‘hits’ which potentially contain information relating to the search terms used. Each ‘hit’ is a single email, although that email will often consist of a chain of emails containing the search term at least once.
We have done an initial search for all emails held by TfL sent/received from the people that would have been involved in the proposal that contain the terms “£160” and “£180”. This has returned 1,178 hits between May 2021 and May 2022. These results will likely includes duplicates, as well as emails not caught by the request. However, we would still need to manually review all of the emails identified by the search in order to extract and collate the relevant emails. Additionally, this search would not cover the entirety of the information we hold so further searches would need to be done which would likely generate similar results.
We are therefore applying Regulation 12(4)(b) to this part of your request as we believe it is ‘manifestly unreasonable’. Providing the information you have requested would place an unreasonable burden on the small team that would have to collate and review the requested information.
To help bring the time taken to respond to your request, you may wish to consider narrowing its scope. If there are any additional keywords that you would like us to search for this would allow us to do a more targeted search, or you may wish to specify a timeframe for the request. By their nature, emails contain a significant amount of personal data such as phone numbers and email addresses and so, whilst this process of redaction does not feature as part of our considerations on whether the cost limit might apply, the burden created by non-specific requests for emails is significant and this should be borne in mind before submitting requests of this nature. Instead, if you have specific questions that we can answer these may be easier to process and provide you with the information you require.
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 the requested information would promote accountability and transparency in public services and may help address your particular concerns. However, the time it would take to provide the information you have requested would divert a disproportionate amount of our resources from its core functions and on balance we consider that the public interest currently favours the use of the exception.
We will consider your request again, if you are able to narrow its scope so that we can more easily locate, retrieve and extract the information you are seeking. As stated above, if you have specific questions we will be happy to consider those.
2. All evidence, whether internally generated or externally sourced, which relate to the increase in penalty charge.
We have set out in our consultation material why we think the penalty charge needs to increase including inflationary factors, increases in public transport fares and the level of the Congestion Charge itself reducing the relative disbenefit of the penalty charge level. This can be found in our Background to the Proposals document (https://haveyoursay.tfl.gov.uk/15619/widgets/44946/documents/27070) under the specific proposal set out on page 47 and 48. The impact of this increase has also been assessed within our published Integrated Impact Assessment (https://haveyoursay.tfl.gov.uk/15619/widgets/44946/documents/27025), on page 85. Furthermore, an Impact Assessment and Equalities Impact Assessment (https://haveyoursay.tfl.gov.uk/15619/widgets/44946/documents/27069) has been published which considers this specific proposal.
If this is not the information you are looking for, or if you are unable to access it for some reason, please feel free to contact me.
Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.
Yours sincerely
Gemma Jacob Senior FOI Case Officer FOI Case Management Team General Counsel Transport for London
