Request ID: FOI-0601-2122 Date published: 15 July 2021
You asked
I would like to make a request under the Freedom of Information Act.
This request concerns formal and informal interactions between Transport for London (TfL) and Apartments for London (AfL) and its representatives. I understand that TfL began considering these proposals in or around January 2018.
Please could you provide me with:
1. Copies of all internal commercial development advice, property advice, financial advice and legal advice regarding the TfL-AfL proposals. This should include emails from relevant TfL staff members (including those substantively employed, contractors or seconded). This should not be limited to final reports but should also include relevant documents where staff have shared opinions on the accounting, financing and legal implications of the proposals.
2. Copies of any external commercial development advice, property advice, financial advice and legal advice regarding the TfL-AfL proposals. This should include emails with auditors (EY) and advice from firms such as PwC, Deloitte, Grant Thornton, etc. This should not be limited to final reports but should also include relevant documents where staff have shared opinions on the accounting, financing and legal implications of the proposals.
3. Copies of any emails and letters set by TfL to PWC in relation to the TfL-AfL proposals.
4. Copies of any Heads of Terms, contracts, leases, and any other legal documents signed between TfL and AfL, including with any subsidiaries or intermediaries.
5. Please could you also tell me when the proposals were first raised, and who proposed it?
We answered
Our ref: FOI-0601-2122/GH
Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 22 June 2021 asking for information about proposals between TfL and AfL.
Your request has been considered under the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and our information access policy.
I can confirm that we do hold the information you require. However, 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 requests 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. In this instance, we estimate that the time required to answer your request would exceed 18 hours which, at £25 per hour (the rate stipulated by the Regulations), exceeds the ‘appropriate limit’.
The information you have requested is potentially held across a variety of different areas of the organisation, and many of the officers who were involved in these proposals have now left TfL. Therefore, to locate the emails, reports and documents you have requested, we conducted a remote email search of all TfL email accounts using the keyword “Apartments for London” between 1 January 2016 and 22 June 2021. This email search identified over 78,000 ‘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.
Each of these hits would need to be manually reviewed to see if they were in fact relevant to your request and then extract and compile those that are relevant, it is likely that many of these will also be duplicates. For such a large number of results, this process would exceed the cost limit explained above. To help bring the cost of responding to your requests within the £450 limit, you may wish to consider refining your request to more specific information such as specific documentation or reports. If you have specific questions relating to this topic we may be more easily able to respond to these than to a request for any information held, as this can often incorporate a significant amount of information that is not of interest.
By way of background, we can advise you that we explored a number of opportunities with modern methods of construction and worked with AfL to quickly and easily bring forward new homes on some of our more awkwardly shaped car parks. None of these options worked and AfL were unable to deliver contractual terms pursuant to the procurement process. The proposals were therefore not taken forward.
If you are not satisfied with this response please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.
Yours sincerely
Graham Hurt FOI Case Officer FOI Case Management Team General Counsel Transport for London
