For correspondence and accounts of meetings in relation to the safety of Kennington Station from 1 January 2016 to date with the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority (LFEPA).

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TfL Ref: 0601-1819

Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 6 June 2018 asking for correspondence and accounts of meetings in relation to the safety of Kennington Station from 1 January 2016 to date with the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority (LFEPA).

Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act and our information access policy. I can confirm we do hold some of the information you require. You asked for: correspondence and accounts of meetings in relation to the safety of Kennington Station from 1 January 2016 to date with the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority (LFEPA).

Unfortunately, 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 a request 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. This is calculated at £25 per hour for every hour spent on the activities described. We have estimated that it would significantly exceed the cost limit to provide a response to your current request.

We ran a search using the keyword parameters of ‘@london-fire.gov.uk’, ‘Kennington’ and a date range of 01/01/2016 – onwards, however we stopped the search 1/5 of the way through as the search had already generated 706 potential ‘hits’. Therefore, if we were to continue with the search it is not unreasonable to conclude that we will end up with at least 2,500 ‘ hits’.  Each ‘hit’ is a single email, although that email will often consist of a chain of emails containing the search term at least once. Additionally these ‘hits’ could not be presumed to automatically fall within the scope of your request, as it would need to be determined whether every single email that contained the keywords was caught to answer your request. This would require further review of each individual email. Without reading through every single email and email chain there would be no other way of determining what was within scope of your request. To try and locate, retrieve and extract all the information to try and respond to your request would require a disproportionate effort and the burden of complying would not only lay in reviewing all the correspondence to determine what is relevant to your request, but also the identification and consideration of personal data and confidential material against the exemptions set out in the FOI Act, and where necessary, the application of appropriate redactions to exempt material identified.

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, possibly by significantly reducing the period of time covered by your request or by asking for a specific document. If you want to refine your request or make a Freedom of Information Act request in future, please bear in mind that the Freedom of Information Act allows you to request recorded information held by us. You should identify the information that you want as clearly and concisely as you can, specifying the types of document that you are looking for. You might also consider limiting your request to a particular period of time, geographical area or specific departments of the organisation.

Although your request can take the form of a question, rather than a request for specific documents, we do not have to answer your question if it would require the creation of new information or the provision of a judgement, explanation, advice or opinion that was not already recorded at the time of your request.

Please note that we will not be taking further action until we receive your revised request.

In the meantime, if you have any queries or would like to discuss your request, please do not hesitate to contact me.

I am sorry we are not able to assist on this occasion.

Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.

Yours sincerely

Sara Thomas

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

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