accessibility data in London Bridge Underground Station
Request ID: FOI-0602-2324 Date published: 20 June 2023
You asked
For the purpose of my final undergraduate thesis, I hope I could get most, if not all of these of London Bridge Underground Station:
- Schematic Layout
- Acccessible pathway from entrance to Northern Line
- Width and photos of entrance
- Dimensions and photos of reception/service counters (if any)
- Dimensions, space dimensions, and photos of ticket machine
- Width and number of accessible ticket gate
- Dimensions and photos of lifts, stairs and ramps in the pathway from accessible entrance to Northern Line
- Dimensions and photos of disabled toilets (if any)
- Dimensions and photos of seats and the seating area
- Step and gap between platform and train in the Northern Line.
We answered
TfL Ref: 0602-2324
Thank you for your request received by us on 26 May 2023 asking for information about London Bridge Tube station.
Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy. I can confirm we do hold some of the information you require.
However, to provide the information you have requested would provide a significant burden to our resources and therefore we are not obliged to provide this information in accordance with section 14 of the FOI Act.
We consider the burden of trying to establish what information we do hold to fulfil your request and then attempting to locate and extract it would be disproportionate to the benefit of providing it. This is because the information you have requested will be held in a number of different areas of the organisation, and some of the information will be held in old paper records dating back a number of years and will therefore take a considerable amount of time to try and search for and identify, even to establish what information we actually hold. It is also likely that even if we were even to locate the information, we would need to consider at least some of it against one or more of the exemptions from disclosure under the FOI Act - broadly on the basis of health and safety and / or national security grounds due to the nature of the information you have asked for which forms the infrastructure of the station and could be used for nefarious reasons by others if it was to be released to the ‘public at large’. Therefore, due to the wide scope of your request and the resources required to answer in full, we are refusing your request under section 14 of the FOI Act.
Our principal duty is to provide an effective transport service for London and we consider that answering this request would represent a disproportionate effort. 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 section 14(1) of the FOI Act, this does not reflect a conclusion that it has been your intention to deliberately place an undue burden on our resources.
On the specific application of section 14(1) we have been steered by the ICO guidance on the use of that exemption that can be found on its website here:
You will note that this guidance includes the following advice to public authorities:
“Section 14(1) may be used in a variety of circumstances where a request, or its impact on a public authority, cannot be justified. Whilst public authorities should think carefully before refusing a request as vexatious they should not regard section 14(1) as something which is only to be applied in the most extreme circumstances”;
“Sometimes a request may be so patently unreasonable or objectionable that it will obviously be vexatious….In cases where the issue is not clear-cut, the key question to ask is whether the request is likely to cause a disproportionate or unjustified level of disruption, irritation or distress…This will usually be a matter of objectively judging the evidence of the impact on the authority and weighing this against any evidence about the purpose and value of the request”;
“The public authority may take into account the context and history of the request, where this is relevant”;
“The information Commissioner recognises that dealing with unreasonable requests can place a strain on resources and get in the way of delivering mainstream services or answering legitimate requests.”
“Section 14(1) is designed to protect public authorities by allowing them to refuse any request which have the potential to cause a disproportionate or unjustified level of disruption, irritation or distress”.
“…the concepts of ‘proportionality’ and ‘justification’ are central to any consideration of whether a request is vexatious”;
The guidance includes some specific indicators to help public authorities judge whether or not a case should be considered vexatious. This includes the following:
“Burden on the authority: the effort required to meet the request will be so grossly oppressive in terms of the strain on time and resources, that the authority cannot reasonably be expected to comply, no matter how legitimate the subject matter or valid the intentions of the requester”;
“Frequent or overlapping requests: the requester submits frequent correspondence about the same issue or sends in new requests before the public authority has had an opportunity to address their earlier enquiries”.
“Disproportionate effort: the matter being pursued by the requester is relatively trivial and the authority would have to extend a disproportionate amount of resources in order to meet the request.”
If you would like to re-submit a more focused, specific request then we will, of course, consider it.
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
